Careful Now
by Dionys
Summary: So they've just had almost-sex in the backseat of the car. What next? Doumeki tries to hide his feelings (and newly cured impotence) so Boss doesn't catch on and fire him. Boss, who has definitely caught on, torments Doumeki for his own entertainment. At least the guy's impotent, Yashiro tells himself. [Continuation of manga from Ch 21 to finale]
1. Forced Voyeurism: Time Number 1-4

**Warning: Contains short flashbacks of sex, most of which involves Yashiro in various positions**

* * *

For as long as he could remember, there were things in the world that Doumeki Chikara couldn't understand. And that was just fine by him.

He didn't understand why none of his teachers seemed to like him. He didn't understand why the nurse to whom he lost his virginity had come onto him. He didn't understand why his sister developed feelings for him or why his father had violated all the laws of heaven and Earth by sleeping with her. He especially couldn't understand his sister's expression on that awful day. That cold, dead mannequin of a face. Shouldn't she have been clawing that bastard's eyes out of his sockets? Shouldn't she have flailed and raged against God and man alike? Shouldn't -?

Anyway, he didn't understand any of it. And in a way, it was just fine that he didn't understand. Because in all of those situations that were well beyond his capacity for reason, there had only been one obvious course of action.

(In order: try hard in school anyway, fuck the nurse, ignore his sister, beat his father to a bloody pulp and do jail time for it.)

But now, for the first time in his life, Doumeki didn't understand something but wished to God that he did. A great many somethings, in fact, all of which revolved around Yashiro.

For instance, he didn't understand his own evolving feelings of jealousy. He'd always wanted Yashiro, from the first moment of seeing his almost inhumanly graceful figure, that poise and self-confidence.

And yet, **the first time he'd seen Yashiro getting fucked** (detective on the table, legs spread and being slammed mercilessly), he'd only felt the need to protect. Which, really, is why he pulled the guy off him and worked up the nerve to speak to Yashiro for the first time.

 _Are you okay?_ Followed by _Of course I'm fine, you moron._ An auspicious start.

 **Time Number 2** was with someone he couldn't recall (detective again?) and all he felt was awkward. (Yashiro facing Doumeki on the couch, the guy behind him, slamming him mercilessly). Just sheer awkwardness. Almost no resentment. And no lust, obviously. His limp fellow down south made sure of that. If anything, he felt relief when he was asked to leave.

The first prick of jealousy was when he threw the door open to **Time Number 3** (Yashiro with bound hands up against the window, Ryuuzaki behind him, slamming him mercilessly.) Yes. Okay. That time, it was jealousy. Especially when Yashiro, in that breathless voice of his, a voice that retained that smooth, honey-like quality even when he was being fucked, begged Ryuuzaki not to stop because he hadn't finished.

And then there was fateful **Time Number 4**. The huge, loathsome cop who was more gorilla than man. That time, it took everything in Doumeki's power to leave the room. To ignore the cries of pain from the other side of the door. It was jealousy, sure, but it had morphed into something else. Something with complicated, tertiary shades he couldn't even begin to analyse.

And so he was left wondering… what had changed? He'd always wanted Boss, even before he was Boss. So why the slow, painful transformation from Time Number 2's awkwardness to Time Number 4's pulsing jealousy-hatred-self-loathing-desire?

He wished he could understand himself because he needed to gather all his wits, even if his wits numbered in the single digits, to make it through what was going to be Time Number 5. Not only did he need to make it through for his own sanity, he also had to make sure he wasn't being a blatantly obvious, jealousy-riddled oaf in front of Yashiro who would probably fire him without skipping a beat.

He prayed Yashiro hadn't noticed and wouldn't notice. He hadn't prayed so hard in his life.

Yashiro, of course, had noticed.

* * *

To be fair, it had probably taken him a little (a lot) longer than it should have. But he had finally caught on.

And ever since they dropped the injured Nanahara off at Kageyama's and tussled in the backseat for what felt like hours, Yashiro had been monitoring him closely.

His observations were hampered by live-wire memories of Doumeki's tongue in his ass, the strength of the grip on his ankles and the by-now familiar stroke of that large hand on his cock. And that expression. Always that expression. _I want to know what you look like when you're dying to have sex._ Hadn't Yashiro wished for exactly that?

The memories made him half-hard even now, days later.

To try to shelve them, Yashiro observed. He kept his face angled so he could watch Doumeki during meetings. He said certain things specifically to test his reactions. It was like throwing a buttery crust and watching the gull creep closer.

He was planning ahead, diligently, to make Time Number 5 as painful for Doumeki as possible.


	2. Forced Voyeurism: Time Number 5

**Setting:** Yashiro's office, a few days since Nanahara was found.

 **Our guys:** Yashiro, Doumeki, Nahahara in bandages.

 **New guys:** A few boys from Matsubara group.

 **Topic of conversation:** Hirata, recently revealed as everyone's love-to-hate villain of the day.

Yashiro sat on his leather couch, enlightening the interim leader of the Matsubara group (since Ryuuzaki was still technically their prisoner and therefore unavailable) about the situation. **(** **The situation:** Current hostilities involving an angry, jealous, possibly sexually repressed Hirata trying to kill Yashiro to ensure his own promotion. Yashiro's plan was to give the Matsubara group enough information to gain a tentative ally but not enough to make them equals.)

The leader, Ota, was a relatively fresh face. In his early thirties, lean-faced, with that fit swimmer's build that gave him the look of an upside-down triangle, he sat opposite and his eyes did all the right things. That is, they inadvertently flit from Yashiro's face to his cock to his legs every few seconds. At one stage, the faintest pink touched his cheeks just below his eyes. Yashiro was flattered. If there was ever a more obvious newbie who wanted his turn at the executive toilet…

Ota put up a good front in front of his men. He said no to almost everything because he couldn't see what was in it for Matsubara. Yashiro took the hints gracefully like he was picking up golden pennies. With a gentle word, he sent everyone from the room except Ota and Doumeki.

Feeling both relieved and more out of his depth without the presence of his men, Ota shot a nervous glance at the stolid, silent bodyguard standing some ways behind Yashiro and wondered why he'd been allowed to stay.

'I'm assuming,' said Yashiro, smiling as he lit up a cigarette. 'That you're waiting for something to sweeten the deal?'

Oh, how adorable, he thought, dragging luxuriously. I didn't know grown men could blush like that.

He turned very slightly in his seat under the pretext of crossing his legs so the firm, hulking outline of his bodyguard-cum-plaything was in his field of vision.

'We could talk more openly tomorrow at the Dolphin, if that's to your taste. You know the hotel?'

There. It was slight but perceptible. A clenching of the jaw, a tightening of the fist, a nerve popping somewhere, maybe. Yashiro couldn't be sure if he was projecting or imagining, but something had changed in Doumeki. A thrill ran through him, one that was both familiar and not.

'I – the – yes, I know it,' Ota blubbered.

'Good. See you there tomorrow. Shall we say noon? It'll be like having dessert just before lunch.'

 _Oh! Oh, did Doumeki's eyes just narrow? No? I don't know. Let's just say they did._

Ota stared at the coffee table before him, ears flaming. He tried to put up one last fight.

'It won't – that is, I'm not saying for sure that we'll agree to anything, even if…'

'Of course, of course,' Yashiro said airily. 'We're just talking. Negotiating.' He fixed Ota with a look that had sent better men to their knees. Or rather, made better men force him to his knees. 'But, you know, negotiating can be fun.'

Ota's ears were still flaming when he left. He refused to make eye contact with any of his men.

* * *

Time Number 5, Doumeki thought when he awoke the next morning, feeling like he hadn't slept at all. Time Number 5. Just get through it.

* * *

Yashiro gazed out the window as the Lexus cut through the light midday traffic, if traffic in Tokyo could ever be considered light. It was a bright, cloudless, sunlight-dappled day. Absolutely chipper weather. Perfect for sightseeing. Or bird-watching. Or window shopping. Or… but Yashiro ran out of clever observation-related activities.

Doumeki hadn't glanced at him once through the rear-view mirror, something which proved almost as conspicuous as his usual habit of staring far too long and too hard.

The stately building of the Dolphin came swimming into view. Yashiro stared, concentrating, and made Doumeki circle it twice before directing him to a very specific parking space across the street. Doumeki was too busy trying to get a firm reign on his emotions to notice any oddness. These unreigned emotions conjured an image of some old Western he'd seen as a kid where the horses were running and braying and had flared nostrils. Was that the movie where in real life the horses were all driven over a cliff to real-life deaths just for the sake of the movie? Could people really be so cruel? They were just horses. They were just doing as they were told, trusting their masters, unaware of –

'…meki! Idiot!'

'Wha- yes. Sorry, Boss.'

'Where the hell were you just then?'

'Nowhere. Sorry.'

'I said you're coming with me to make sure everything's on the level in there. Sometimes it's the blubbering sweet ones you have to watch out for.'

'Yes, Boss.'

It was the longest walk-through-the-lobby-and-up-to-the-third-floor of Doumeki's life. Boss smelled damn good in the elevator. Musk and expensive cologne.

Yashiro had only dragged Doumeki there to rub Ota in his silent, chiselled face. And yet, his instincts had been a bit more on par than he intended. Ota was waiting for them in the suite but he wasn't alone.

 **Matsubara guy #2:** Taller even than Doumeki, strikingly good looking, longish hair partially obscuring an eye, oozing money and power. Beside him, Ota stood looking sheepish and nervous and shrunken by comparison.

'Nakazawa,' the handsome fellow introduced himself, even offering his left hand to Yashiro after a brief glance at his sling-encased right arm. He didn't give the bodyguard a passing glance. 'Shadow king of Mastubara,' he added modestly. 'Interim, of course.'

'Of course.'

Yashiro, despite himself, felt a jolt of excitement in the man's presence. It was rare for him to be in danger of being outdone as the most beautiful/charming/ineffably dashing person in the room.

Doumeki hated the man more than he'd hated any one human being in his life, barring his father.

'Forgive my unexpected presence,' Nakazawa went on smoothly. 'But when I heard about impending negotiations, I simply had to insist that my two cents be factored in. At the same time, if possible. Ota,' and here he inclined his head backwards to indicate his uncomfortable colleague, 'eventually came round to the idea, though he continues to be worried about your reaction.'

 _Say no_ , Doumeki thought desperately.

'By all means,' said Yashiro.

'See, Ota? I told you he'd be open to the idea.' Nakazawa didn't seem to take any perceptible steps forward but suddenly he had Yashiro's chin in his hand. 'I've heard he's open to anything.'

No one, least of all Doumeki, could have predicted Doumeki's fist flying through the air, nor the solid, defined sound it made when it hit Nakazawa's jaw.

After Nakazawa's grunt and short stumble backwards, there was a stunned pause.

 _Really?_ said the same voice in Doumeki's head that had droned on about dead horses. _Over this sleazeball and twenty seconds of his sleazeball words? You've seen Boss get ploughed like a cheap whore and never lifted a goddamn finger!_

Yashiro was speechless for a few moments.

Doumeki's fist stung and his mind was a blank. He heard Yashiro's placating apologies like they were coming through faulty speakers. He felt, rather than heard, his master summoning him out of the room into the hallway. For a brief few seconds as he robotically followed, he allowed himself to be elated. He'd prevented Time Number 5!

And then reality came back in a rush of sound when Yashiro stopped in front of the elevators and stared at him with an expression like ice. Doumeki felt the blood drain from his face.

'Boss, I -'

The backhand was like a whiplash. Stronger than Doumeki could have believed, in fact. He almost fell against the elevator buttons. It was no accident that Yashiro had aimed for the knife cut on his cheek. He straightened with effort, trying to understand why he felt the hurt someplace else. It was the first time Boss had ever raised a hand to him.

Yashiro's gaze was sedate but dangerous. He took a few seconds to enjoy the sight of Doumeki trying to straighten and remain small at the same time.

The plan had either backfired or blossomed into something unexpected and wonderful. Yashiro wasn't sure which. Either way, he was slightly more upset than he cared to admit.

'Wait by the car,' he said coldly. 'Don't move a muscle from there until I'm done. Is that clear?'

'Yes, Boss.'

'Get out of my sight.'

* * *

If the walk through the lobby and ride up in the elevator had seemed long, waiting by the car in the merry, perfect spring weather dragged on for years. He leaned against the hood and considered his shoes. There was still a slight tingling in his cheek and fist.

Bored of his shoes, he glanced up, wondering what time it was but too nervous to look at his watch in case it told him only two and a half minutes had elapsed.

Given everything that had happened, he was actually almost pleased with himself. Between thinking about dead horses, Yashiro's deadpan expression by the elevator, the satisfying sound of his fist cracking that smug bastard's jaw, dead horses, the red-streaked pain of Yashiro's hand hitting his knife wound, dead horses, scuffed shoes, and a number of other unrelated things, he had successfully managed to prevent himself from imagining what was taking place on the third floor.

The third floor.

Like a magnet was drawing his eyes against his will, he ran them along the row of floor-to-ceiling windows. Drawn curtains, mostly. Some open. And suddenly…

He looked away, heart pounding.

 _Do not_ , the voice said slowly and clearly. _Do not look back up there again. Do you hear me?_

But of course he looked. And then he couldn't look away.

* * *

They shared a sum total of zero words in the car until they reached Yashiro's neighbourhood. Doumeki had allowed himself only a brief recon as Yashiro fell with a sigh into the backseat (bruises and bite marks on his neck, evidence of rope burn, a small cut beneath his ear, but otherwise safe and sound) before pulling away.

Yashiro finally spoke when they were near his apartment.

'One more embarrassing display like that and you're finished here.'

His voice held the same glossy threat that Doumeki had heard in the hotel. He wasn't joking.

'Understood.' And after a slight pause, 'I'm sorry, Boss.'

No response.

Doumeki glanced down at his own knuckles. He frowned, wondering why they were so white and taut. Skin condition. Jaundice, or something. Wouldn't that just be great, on top of everything else? Maybe it was malnutrition. When was the last time he'd eaten a dark green vegetable?

That was when he thought to relax his grip on the wheel. The blood slowly returned to his hands.

As he pulled up outside Yashiro's building, he worked up a sliver of courage.

'Are you hungry, Boss? I could make you something.'

'No.'

Leave me alone, in other words. Doumeki felt dumbbells in his chest.

Before he got out, Yashiro seemed to be toying with something in his mind. His familiar, feline smirk had returned. Doumeki would have been relieved if he hadn't felt his skin prickle.

'I'll make my own lunch,' said Yashiro finally, opening the door. 'And you should go get something to eat too. I'm sure you worked up a huge appetite during the show.'

 _Show?_

The smile Yashiro flashed before he left seemed to have been permanently grafted to the rear-view mirror.

 _He saw me looking. Of course he did. Fuck, you're an idiot. A complete, utter, award-winning…_

But then it came to Doumeki slowly, in pieces. The precise parking. The order to stay by the car and not move.

He'd been positioned. Strategically manoeuvred. Like a chess piece. The knight who'd been moved just so it could watch the queen get banged by the other side's king and bishop or whatever the fuck. He felt blood pound in his ears.

Without thinking, he got out of the car.

Yashiro, who was still at the front door fumbling one-handed (of course) for his keys, turned in mild surprise.

In Doumeki's mind, his boss was still on all fours on the carpet by the floor-to-ceiling window, Nakazawa gritting his teeth and pulling his hair and pounding him roughly while Yashiro's tear-streaked face was plugged by a flustered and sweating Ota. His steady stream of moans was punctured by each tug of the rope connecting his neck and bound hands. He gasped, allowing Ota's dripping cock to slip from his mouth, when Nakazawa bent over to bite his neck hard.

Naturally, from across the road, Doumeki hadn't been able to observe details like gritted teeth and sweat and punctured moans but his mind had graciously filled in the blanks for him.

Eyes livid, Doumeki reached him, pushed him backwards, held him against the front door and took his jaw roughly in his hand, even banging his head back a little on the door. He watched Yashiro's eyes flash and narrow. His mind raced through all possibilities: fuck him, kiss him, hit him, strangle him, cry into his shoulder. He was ruled by a feeling quite similar to the time Yashiro lied about what he'd told his sister. And he was doing something quite similar in response, he realised. How unoriginal.

He didn't even know why he was so angry. Hadn't he long since accepted his role as his boss' plaything? Hadn't he almost welcomed it at first?

Meanwhile, Yashiro's cock had sprung to attention immediately and painfully. Like Doumeki, he was thinking back to a previous episode. But unlike last time, Yashiro felt vulnerable in a completely different, dangerous way. His waking thoughts and even dreams lately, especially since their encounter in the backseat of the Lexus, had been a one-track reel. And here was the star of it all, holding him against a door, hand gripping his face and wearing that unbelievable expression. He smelled damn good. Sweat and cheap cologne.

'Careful, now,' Yashiro managed to say, relieved that his voice sounded measured.

The steady voice cut through all the layers. _You're finished here_. Doumeki's worst nightmare. The only thing he couldn't fathom.

He let go and stepped back, amazed that he was able to feel more humiliated than he had before. Were there even more unplundered depths to reach? He was breathing heavily and stared at Yashiro's arm in the sling, unable to look him in the eye.

'Go home.'

Relief, at first. He wasn't fired.

Then, after the front door opened and closed, coldness. No not quite. Emptiness? Something.

Something. Nothing.

He turned and slumped against the door. Aware that by doing so he was conforming to a bit part in a daytime soap, he slid to the ground and held his head between his knees, trying to get his pulse to return to normal.

 **A summary of the various lengths he had experienced that day:** Lobby and elevator ride: a long time. Waiting by the car: years. Sitting there like a stained, crumpled, discarded fast food bag: fucking forever.

* * *

Or thirty seconds.

The door yanked opened and he fell backwards onto a foot.

'On second thought,' Yashiro said from above him in a light, careless drawl. 'I just remembered if I can't even masturbate properly with one hand I sure as hell won't be able to cook. In fact, I don't think I ever cooked a day in my life.'

Doumeki scrambled to his feet.


	3. Sweet Little Dairy Cow

**Warning: Hardcore stuff ahead. But, being a _Saezuru_ fan, you can probably handle it.**

* * *

 **Setting:** Yashiro's apartment, not long after Time Number 5

 **Cast:** Yashiro (confident, mostly relaxed, in a playful mood) and Doumeki (nervous, jealous, relieved not to be fired, making lunch)

 **Topic of conversation:** Time Number 5

'Took a while to get everything out,' Yashiro announced to the apartment at large after his bath. 'Amazing how much difference one extra cock can make.'

Doumeki took a steady breath and continued methodically chopping the potatoes into cubes and shifted them to the side of the board with his knife. He drew a bunch of coriander out of the bag, held it down by the neck ( _Neck? No, stem. Stem…_ ) and sliced the fluffy, trembling heads.

Damp-haired, Yashiro ambled into the kitchen wearing a new shirt and vaulted onto the counter opposite Doumeki. He privately congratulated himself on his growing list of one-handed gymnastics. Doumeki didn't turn around. With a small sigh, Yashiro picked an apple out of the nearby fruit bowl and munched, humming idly. His low voice reverberated off the hanging utensils in gentle waves of colour.

He wasn't bad, Doumeki thought. Not bad at all. The tune was familiar. Dry and sad. He tried to recall the name.

The oil was beginning to sizzle in the pan. Doumeki held his hand over the base, flat, to test the heat.

For no earthly reason whatsover, this simple act made Yashiro's heartbeat skyrocket. It was Doumeki's bandaged, four-fingered hand. He imagined the heat on that hand. He imagined how it would feel to press it, bare, to the stove. He imagined it inside him, thrusting like it was searching for something. Such an unnecessarily large hand. Who in their right mind would purposely engineer a hand that large?

'Have you fallen for me, Doumeki?'

The onions loudly turned brown in the pan.

'You have, haven't you?' A wet crunch of his apple. Through a mouthful: 'I suppose you think you've done a terrific job hiding it, too.' A chuckle. Sinister and light.

Doumeki had frozen. The back of his neck burned under that gaze.

It took an inhuman effort but he finally moved his hand an inch. Then he drew it back to himself fully. He reached for the carrots. A carrot. A long, thick carrot that tapered into a spindly, weak little point. He chopped.

'I'm curious. If you care about me so much, how did it feel? To watch me get fucked only an hour ago?'

From small, spindly little nothings to larger and larger circles. Bold orange on the circumference and weak, pale orange in the centre. All the circles alike, just differing in size.

'In a real spit roast, no less. You saw how they tied me up, right? It was Nakazawa who did that. Ota just stood there like a kid, watching while he tied the knots. Real sweet kid, just wanted to put his dick in something, didn't want to hurt anyone. Reminded me of you, actually. He even said "Careful!" once when Nakazawa took off my sling to tie my hands. Can you imagine?'

Yashiro slid closer to Doumeki. From there, he could touch him if he reached out his foot.

'Then Nakazawa stretched me out good and wide.'

 _Focus on the carrots. Don't cut yourself. Don't bleed into the stir fry._

'Literally took my ass cheeks in both hands and stretched them apart for ages. Minutes. I felt like my hole was going to tear. He didn't stick anything in for the longest time, just stretched it like a madman and stared. Listened to me whimper through the gag. Pretty sure Ota was jacking off by this stage, not that I was particularly focused on what he was doing.'

Even though neither Doumeki nor anyone else could see the boss' eyes in that moment, they had slowly taken on a manic glint over the course of his monologue. Yashiro's heart was hammering in its white cage and he didn't know why. He didn't care. He just knew he'd found a wound - a sore, soft, pulsing little place – and he wanted to twist the blade in as deep as it would go.

'So when he finally started fucking me,' he said, taking another huge bite. 'I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I think I did both. So he smashed my head onto the floor to shut me up. Deep-dicked me like that for a while. From the tip to the base, over and over until I was raw. I came hard just from the feeling of it, no one had to touch me anywhere else. Then Ota found his balls and came over, finally.'

 _That's enough, now._ Yashiro ignored the voice. It sounded like a voice begging to be ignored.

'Not a bad piece on him, as it turned out. Shoved it in my mouth right to the hilt. I can still feel the bruise on the back of my throat. I choked and that made him come pretty much immediately. Nakazawa unloaded too. Both ends at once. A nice little coincidence.'

Green beans next. Doumeki found himself cursing the trembling knife.

'And that was just the first round. Both prime cocks.' Yashiro sighed nostalgically. He raised one foot and ran it gently along Doumeki's belt in the small of his back. 'Made me wonder what yours would be like if you ever got it working again. I bet it's spectacular. Or used to be, at least.'

Doumeki was harder then than he had been at any point in the past twenty-five years.

Yashiro's foot slid slowly across the belt towards the front. It reached further and further at a snail's pace.

 _No way the man's legs are that long_ , Doumeki told himself desperately. He tried to turn away. He wondered whether it would be more subtle if he took a step towards the fridge or flung himself out the kitchen window.

Yashiro suddenly laughed. The atmosphere broke in two. His foot was gone and he sprang lightly from the counter.

'I don't give a shit if you have feelings for me,' he said with cold nonchalance, finishing off the apple and throwing it at the waste basket. It bounced off the edge. He had to work on left-handed aim. 'Because you're like a bull without the horns. Nothing dangerous about you. I mean, what's a hornless bull? A cow! You're a sweet little dairy cow.'

He laughed again. Not the organic, raucous laughter brought about by the sight of Doumeki's impassive face above an absurd tiger sweater. This laughter was more controlled. More forced.

When Yashiro moved away, Doumeki's breathing relaxed but his hands still shook. And his little friend was still very much on alert. _Go away,_ he begged. _Please. You'll get us fired. He'll never want to see us again._

'Feelings and overprotectiveness are very bad traits for a bodyguard, you know. Very bad,' Yashiro went on relentlessly. He felt like he had talked for years and yet the garrulous, empty words kept pouring out of him. He was talking for the sake of talking. Bizarrely, he even felt like crying.

He doubled back to snatch a stray circle of carrot from the chopping board, grazing Doumeki's back and arm and wreaking havoc on his heart rate.

'Gets in the way of everything. Especially in our line of work. But, like I said, as far as you're concerned, who the hell cares?'

He popped the circular slice into his mouth and chewed.

'I hope you understand how lucky you are. Impotence is literally the only thread holding your job together.'

He suddenly looped a hand around Doumeki's waist and, with a confident chuckle, seized his cock. Hard.

Time froze. Even the onions sizzled quieter in the pan.

* * *

Yashiro's eyes widened. His jaw paused mid-chew.

Doumeki pulled away seconds too late. He could only hear someone else's pulse in his ears. The onions, he realised quite seriously, were starting to go black from lack of attention.

'Well, well...'

 _Shit._

'Well, well, well…'

 _Please don't…_

'Please don't –' The words had actually sputtered out of him. A fleck of spittle hit the pan and sizzled beside the charring onions.

'Please don't what?' Yashiro sounded a little stunned.

'Please don't tell my sister.' His mind was reeling, grasping. 'If you're going to fire me. She says she's proud of me. That I work for you. She doesn't even care what you do. She...'

But he stopped because Yashiro was laughing again. Doumeki braced himself and then finally turned around.

Tears had gathered in the corners of Yashiro's eyes and the laughter was nearing hysterical. Doumeki felt a chill.

'Your sister,' Yashiro gasped, almost doubled up. 'You spring a boner for the first time that I've ever seen and the first thing you do is beg me not to tell _your sister?'_

He dissolved into unrestrained cackles, chest heaving.

Although a chill still clung to him, Doumeki felt a tiny ray of hope.

'So I'm… I'm not fired?'

Yashiro straightened, wiping his eyes. 'Oh, you're definitely fired.'

'But –'

'Moron, are you deaf? Didn't you hear what I was just telling you? I _won't_ have this kind of shit getting in the way of work. I warned you when you first came to me. God!' He was suddenly done laughing. 'No wonder you went all alpha on Nakazawa today. You've been getting hard all over the place and just not telling me, haven't you?'

Nakazawa's name was like a shard of glass in Doumeki's foot.

Yashiro's face was still a little flushed from laughing but he had regained control. He inhaled steadily and arranged his features in a way he knew would be impossible to read. Cold and composed, with the hint of a wry, dry little smile that saw through the bullshit of the world. Doumeki watched from very far away.

 _You've heard stuff about me from Kirishima, haven't you?_

There he was, stiff-backed and nervous as hell, sitting for the first time in Yashiro's presence. Was that only months ago? He had been star struck under that steady gaze.

 _Tell me. I won't get mad._

He had answered the question honestly because, at the time, he couldn't summon any other useful part of his mind.

 _He smiles even when he's_ _mad_ , he'd replied evenly. _So be careful._

Doumeki's heart sank to the bottom of a deep, dark well. He knew now there was no arguing with that smile. The boss had made up his mind.

Absent-mindedly, Yashiro ran a hand through his hair, eyebrows lifted, testing to see how much it had dried. He turned away.

'Go,' was the simple command. 'Go to the office, get your stuff and go. You'll get a severance cheque and all that. But I don't want to see you again.'

'Boss, please –'

A withering look.

'I'm not your boss anymore.'

That was all it took. After that, there was an audible snap somewhere. At least Doumeki was sure there was because he heard it. He could even identify that it was a leathery sort of snap, like a belt or cord holding something back. Holding something together. And when it snapped, with that snappy, leathery sort of snap, everything tumbled and seized and overwhelmed. All those tertiary emotions he couldn't analyse before. And at the head of them all, like a helmeted captain, a very uncomplicated primary desire leading the charge.

 _Defile._

Yashiro saw it out of the corner of his eye and he realised he couldn't have stopped it even if he tried.

A suddenly towering, glowering Doumeki grabbed him for a beat or two by the shirt front and then, without warning, threw him over his shoulder.

'What the f-?'

For a moment there, for the first time since he was shot, he almost felt real fear. The feeling shot straight to his cock and built all the way to the bedroom where Doumeki hurled him onto the bed.

His shirt was torn off with such force that buttons actually flew. He felt a sharp pain in his right arm when the sleeve pulled away. Pants were tugged off in one breath as well. His sling barely made it through the assault.

'Ah! Fuck, Doumeki, wait –'

'Shut up.'

The words and tone were more shocking than the hand on his cock, squeezing and stroking entirely too hard. He tried to sit up but Doumeki pushed him back immediately and held him down as he stroked. Yashiro wanted to paint the image of his face into his eyelids permanently. It was the closest he'd ever come, he realised out of nowhere, to wanting a tattoo.

Suddenly Doumeki's hand was off his cock and in his ass. Two fingers. Without any preamble. Yashiro exhaled in surprise. How wishes come true.

Doumeki also made a sound for the first time, even closed his eyes briefly. He had imagined this heat for so long that it was almost unreal. He pushed in a third finger. He heard Yashiro grunt in pain. He was causing it. He revelled in it.

And yet, when he looked down, he saw a shade of pain in Yashiro's features that almost… irritated him. It wasn't real pain. Not yet.

He yanked his ass up in the air so Yashiro's legs hung almost near his face and gathered all the spit he could muster. The hole puckered and twitched when the frothy liquid landed.

With that, he lowered him back to the bed and held him down. Unbuckling his belt one-handed, he slid out through his fly and lined himself up. The heat, even on the tip of his cock, was incredible.

Yashiro held his breath. It was big. Far too big. Just like the bastard's hands and feet and height and everything else about him. He shivered with urgent need and, again, with fear.

There. The whites of his eyes. Doumeki stared hard and pushed with everything he had.

He tore his way into Yashiro's body and the pain was profound. It seared and burned. None of the pleasure, all of the agony. Yashiro's eyes rolled in the back of his head and he came instantly, all over his stomach and Doumeki's hand.

The convulsing of his ass was almost too much for Doumeki but somehow he held himself back. He waited until he had settled, even counted to ten, then drew himself out almost all the way.

Yashiro, recovering from his climax, felt every inch of the withdrawal. Even that burned. There was not enough lube. Not enough by a long shot. Not even if he was being fucked by a normal-sized penis.

'Wait,' he managed to gasp, head tilted back, his good arm reaching up. 'You idiot, you need to –'

'Shut up,' Doumeki hissed again. And he plunged.

Yashiro let out a haggard cry. And another. And another. For every thrust, he saw stars, then red, then stars again, then streaks of evil yellow. All shades. There would be blood for sure. He gasped for air.

'So… so good!'

Even through Doumeki's mounting pleasure and his own pain ( _How the hell can anything in the world be this unthinkably tight?_ ) Yashiro's voice, weak and trembling and breathless as it was, set off a bright flare of anger.

He slid his bandaged hand to Yashiro's throat and held it down. He didn't squeeze, he just pressed against the larynx hard enough so Yashiro would struggle to form words. So his moans would emerge in chokes.

Yashiro felt as though he had stumbled into a dream. His body was being ripped into again and again while breath struggle to filter into his lungs. He stared into Doumeki's glinting, unblinking eyes and felt another climax building. This couldn't be real. Doumeki couldn't be this... good. Not his bumbling oaf of a bodyguard.

Suddenly, he felt the cold air of emptiness as Doumeki pulled out completely. The hand was off his throat too. Yashiro was flipped over and his face pressed into the bed in the same breath that Doumeki shoved his cock back in fully.

A familiar warmth now, Doumeki thought surreally. Boss was a familiar warmth.

 _I'm not your boss anymore._

Yashiro heard the clasp being released on his sling and suddenly Doumeki had taken it off. His dead hand fell to the bed like a… like a flaccid dick. He grinned.

The grin vanished when Doumeki grabbed his arm, his gunshot-wounded right arm, tightly. And pulled it back, as hard as he could, twisting it behind Yashiro's back.

Yashiro's strangled shriek rang out in the room. For a split second, Doumeki wondered about the possibility of the cops being called. He didn't release his grip or ease the merciless pace of his thrusts even a little. Let them come.

The sheets beneath Yashiro were soaked with tears. He came again, silently this time but even harder than before, his body rocked by uncontrollable spasms.

 _I think, with you, the sex would be gentle. So, no._

His own words came back to him and he started laughing again. He laughed and laughed through his tears and that sight, finally, pushed Doumeki over the edge. He thrust in as far as he could go, still holding Yashiro's injured arm behind his back, and gushed hotly inside him.

* * *

Sitting on the edge of the bed, breathing heavily, Doumeki Chikara wasn't sure what brought him back to the real world. Could have been a few things.

 **1:** The unreal sight of his own semen leaking out of Boss' ass. **2:** The shivering, naked body itself, curled up on the bed. **3:** Yashiro's short whimpers as he cradled his right arm. **4:** The blood smeared on the front of his own shirt.

Probably the blood, actually. Yes, almost definitely the blood.

It took him a few muddled seconds to even understand where it had come from.

'Boss…'

Yashiro heard the tremor in Doumeki's voice and found himself missing the sex-edition of Doumeki already.

Beads of pain, like pearls, were running together in strings beneath the muscles of his arm, dying out at his wrist where his dead hand flopped, not feeling a thing. And there was the throbbing in his rectum. The aching muscles of his thighs and good arm. The feeling that if he moved any one thing, everything would hurt. He was in heaven.

He felt the weight shift on the mattress and felt Doumeki hovering.

'Get the sling,' he said shakily.

Doumeki found it on the floor and brought it to Yashiro's side. He suddenly didn't seem to know what to do with himself. Yashiro's heart constricted in a totally disagreeable way. He sat up slowly and gingerly.

Try as he might, he was unable to catch Doumeki's gaze even once as they tried to ease his trembling arm back into the sling.

'Boss,' Doumeki mumbled eventually, his voice small and hoarse.

'Not your boss anymore.'

Amazing how much that still hurt.

'We should… you should go see Kageyama.'

Yashiro laughed without humour. 'And try to explain how this happened? Kageyama would shoot you where you stood.'

Doumeki felt winded and nauseous.

In that moment, a piercing, robotic shriek filled the silence. Doumeki's head whipped around.

His alarm clock. Please. Surely he was about to wake and guide himself through Time Number 5. This time he would do better.

'Unbelievable,' Yashiro quipped. 'It's the fire alarm. You really are a prize fucking idiot.'

The onions blackening helplessly. The stove he'd never turned off. The smell of one of his many mistakes of the day suddenly leaked into the apartment like a poisonous gas.

Yashiro struggled to the edge of the bed and stood up slowly. Doumeki now noticed, aghast, the drops of blood mingled with the semen spilling down his thigh.

'Clean up your mess,' Yashiro said to the far wall. He then turned and managed to hold Doumeki's gaze in his own like a grip. 'The one in the kitchen, I mean. Then get out.'


	4. Bits of Brain on his Tiger Sweater

Doumeki had never before noticed that the world was actually made of cardboard. Drab, grey cardboard. His apartment, the streets, the rust-speckled towel railing in his bathroom, his reflection in the mirror, even the sun. Nor had he noticed that there was a thin laminate over all the drab, grey cardboard. So he couldn't even touch any of it. He sort of glided past it all. He wasn't allowed to absorb or be absorbed.

The phone rang. After a week and a half of toppling over furniture and lamps and wires and his own legs to reach it before the ringing stopped, only to see speak to a telemarketer or some cheerful dickhead from a charity, he started ignoring it. He started hating it.

Once, he even smashed it against the wall. Then he crawled to it and pieced it back together, grateful that he was too thick to appreciate terrible symbolism.

Text from his sister: _Where are you?_

Text from Kuga: _?_

Text from Nanahara: _Where the fuck are you?_

(He'd never gone to the office. Severance cheques were about the furthest thing from his mind. He assumed Nanahara had been informed by now.)

Just to torture himself, he'd looked at the last text exchange he'd had under the contact name 'Boss'. It was from the day before he'd last seen him. The day before the disaster.

 _-Go to Kageyama. Painkillers. Morphine. Fucking cocaine, I don't care. My arm hurts like a bitch._

 _-He told me he won't give me any more painkillers for you._

 _-Tell him you'll give him a blow job for some._

About twenty minutes later:

 _-He still said no._

 _-...no way._

 _-What?_

 _-You actually offered to give him a blowjob for painkillers?!_

 _-Boss asked me to._

-…

 _-Boss?_

 _-I'm wanking to the image of you giving Kageyama a blow job. Give me a minute._

 _-OK._

 _-I'm kidding you idiot. I was just laughing too hard to text. Buy some aspirin from the pharmacy or something. Arm still hurting._

Arm still hurting.

Arm still hurting. The words rang across the silence of his dark, increasingly chaotic apartment. It was like a warning to the Doumeki in the future who would twist it and wrench it and make that awful sound come out of Boss.

Strange how some ugly gorilla of a cop in a dinghy hotel had seen through him better than anyone else.

He was just like his father.

* * *

The new bodyguard/attendant/driver's brains were splattered all over the passenger seat. Real, proper bits of brain, not just the cute splotches of blood shown in the movies. Grey-pink. Mostly grey, actually, Yashiro thought. We're all just lumps of meat.

He sighed and clipped a new magazine into his gun with his left hand, the barrel jammed into his right armpit. Bullets ricocheted off the car. Shouting. More bullets. All the Yakuza stuff, Yashiro thought, almost bored. He turned onto his stomach, flattened sideways against the seat back and raised his head. Aimed and fired.

Left-hand aim still not great. He'd made a mental note that day. That day. When the apple core missed the basket. But he hadn't followed up. To be fair, his mind had been otherwise occupied for the past week and a half.

He heard someone cry out and fall. Perhaps his aim wasn't as bad as all that. But it didn't sound like it lessened the number of bullets trying to find his head. He reached for his phone.

Nanahara wasn't picking up. Useless bastard. Sugimoto was an hour away. Misumi was in Taiwan, of course. Ryuuzaki was… oh, right, still their prisoner.

Fate was sitting back with folded arms and a smug smile. Eyebrows up. Do it. Call him.

He sighed again.

It rang out. He tried again and again. No one picked up.

Heavy breathing nearby diverted his attention. A thin, sunglasses-bedecked face made the stupendous mistake of actually poking his head through the window, probably assuming Yashiro was dead from the recent lull. The bullet passed through the underside of his face and a beautiful, rose-shaped pattern blossomed on the car roof beyond his head. Yashiro was briefly hypnotised.

' _Boss?_ '

Hearing voices now, are we? Yashiro ran his finger lovingly under the dead man's chin. His fingertip absorbed some of the blood seeping out from the entry wound. Such a deceptively small entry.

' _Boss, what's happening?_ '

He held the phone to his ear.

'What took you so long?'

'Sorry.'

'New guy's dead. I'm in the car. Someone's trying to kill me. Not doing a great job of it so far, but things might change.'

Dead man was kind of attractive. Yashiro wondered if he should risk losing his other arm reaching up to take off his sunglasses.

'Where are you?'

Yashiro told him.

Less than ten minutes later, he heard a screech of tires. The bullets glancing off his car were diverted. And there was Doumeki leaping through the passenger seat in front, bits of brain and blood from the seat sticking to his… to his… what the fuck was he wearing?

'What the fuck are you wearing?'

Doumeki was too busy shoving his deceased replacement out the door to respond.

'Is that the tiger sweater but inside out?'

'Are you okay?' Doumeki glanced back once. His eyes were the same as always, Yashiro thought. Such a stupid thought.

'Yeah, just go. Keep your head down. It's what the other guy forgot to do.'

The car jolted and took off, bullets hammering again. Semi-attractive sunglasses man slid from the open window, never to be seen again. Yashiro felt nostalgic.

Doumeki struggled with the wheel.

'What's wrong with...?'

'One of the back tires is flat. It's metal on tar back there.'

Sparks flew while they made their escape. Yashiro wondered, properly, who they'd been and why they wanted him dead. Hopefully the few people he'd just called were looking into it.

It didn't take Doumeki long to lose them. Say what you want about him, the man could drive. And fuck.

* * *

They stopped in an abandoned parking lot wedged between two sad restaurants. Yashiro didn't even want to know which part of Tokyo they were in.

'Can you change a tire?'

'Yes.'

'Get to it. I have a flight to catch soon.'

There was something about a man carrying a spare tire, Yashiro thought. He got out, lit a cigarette and leaned against the door, watching Doumeki rest the tire on the ground. He remained there even as Doumeki began jacking the car up.

'I can't believe you're wearing that.'

Doumeki didn't look up from his work. His hair seemed dry and brittle.

'It was the only thing I had that was clean.'

'Why is it inside out?'

'I wasn't paying attention.'

'For a second I thought you were ashamed of the tiger.'

'I don't really care.'

Yashiro looked up and blew out a ring of smoke. It was the time of day when the sky was experimenting with colours. Pinks and purples were strewn through corn-row clouds.

'Where are you flying, Boss?' It sounded like Doumeki had worked up the courage to ask.

'Taiwan. Misumi wants me there for a big meeting. Cloaks and chanting and virgin sacrifices, that sort of thing.'

Silence. Crickets. A few sad patrons shuffling out of their sad restaurants.

'Not sure when I'll be back, but be sure you replace the car before I do. Same make and model. Same everything. Just without the bullet marks. I hate bullet marks on cars. So tacky.'

Doumeki paused. He didn't look up.

'What?' said Yashiro.

'But I… I thought…'

Yashiro smiled and took a drag. He could have come to Doumeki's rescue at any point but he preferred seeing him flail.

'But you thought what?' he said sweetly.

'Am I – are you giving me my job back?' He still hadn't looked up. It was the smallest sound Yashiro had ever heard.

'Idiot, you never lost it in the first place.'

His head snapped up, mouth slightly open. Picture perfect.

'But you said -'

'I just didn't want to see your face for a while. Preferably longer than this, but, well, you can't predict when your new temporary bodyguard's head is going to get blown to pieces. Speaking of, you've got some of that on you still.'

Doumeki couldn't care less about bits of brain on his tiger sweater. Yashiro stood before a halo of harsh, angry fluorescent light cast by the streetlamp behind him. The cigarette smoke lifted up slowly and lazily, carving a ghostly, beautiful path, snake-like. Exactly like his boss. The furthest thing from drab, grey cardboard he could imagine.

Something inside Doumeki expanded and collapsed at the same time.

'Actually, the first time I fired you, in the kitchen, it was because I wanted to see you get pissed off. Worked like a charm. Almost too well.'

How could he recall that so lightly? It was fast becoming one of the worst moments of Doumeki's life. Then again, he'd never understood Boss' sense of humour. He kept screwing in the hubcaps.

'Hurry up. Running late.'

'Yes, Boss.'

 _Boss._

He lifted the dead tire into the trunk. He went back for the rest of the tools. When he straightened with the jack in his hand, Yashiro ground his cigarette beneath his heel and took a step towards him.

'You know,' he said in a tone that sent a spark of electricity down to Doumeki's cock. And then Yashiro's hand was on the front of his pants. His sweatpants, Doumeki noticed suddenly. 'I just realised I've never sucked you off when you were hard.'

Yashiro watched his face. He'd done this, or variations of this, to Doumeki countless times and had received no reaction whatsoever on that sphinx of a face. Here now, suddenly, he saw the flinch, the flush, the skewed glance. Something twitched beneath his hand. He wondered when exactly Doumeki had gotten his monster to work again. He bent and knelt on the hard tarmac.

Doumeki stopped him with a hand under his arm. Without really thinking ahead, he pulled him to his feet. The eyes that met his were inquisitive. Challenging. Doumeki touched his face beneath his ear. The tips of his fingers brushed his hair. He hadn't remembered to touch Boss' hair that day.

Yashiro felt a strange surge of anxiety. His pulse picked up for no reason.

Doumeki kissed him then, which, really, Yashiro should have seen coming but he didn't. It hadn't even occurred to him as a course of action until Doumeki's tongue was in his mouth. The jack clanged to the floor as they backed up against the car, Yashiro's face in Doumeki's hands, tongues wrestling. Yashiro felt the hardness of Doumeki's cock press through sweatpants, tiger sweater and Yashiro's clothes.

 _After all our positions…_

Doumeki breathed him in, pushing his lips further apart, delving into the warmth.

 _And contortions…_

Crushed between them, Yashiro's right arm protested feebly. He ignored it. Doumeki's scent was everywhere; a pungent, almost overwhelming concoction of sweat and grime. He inhaled deeply.

 _Can this really be the first time we've kissed?_

Doumeki broke off and dragged his lips down Yashiro's neck, biting lightly. Yashiro shivered. He tried to reclaim his thoughts, which had scattered to the edges of that godforsaken parking lot.

'As much as I'm enjoying… being made to feel like a girl in junior high... we have to go. International flight, and all.'

Doumeki's voice was hoarse, like Yashiro had heard only once before. 'When do you have to be at the airport?'

He glanced at his watch over Doumeki's head. 'Plane takes off in half an hour.'

Doumeki pulled back and looked at him in mild shock.

'Don't worry, we practically own the airline. None of that check in two hours beforehand bullshit. As long as I get there before the wheels are off the ground, they have to let me on.'

'But the airport's at least forty minutes away.'

'Better get going then.'

* * *

By the time they arrived twenty-five minutes later, Yashiro was amazed they hadn't flattened any strollers or bicycles along the way. The man knew how to drive. And fuck. And kiss.

Shame he couldn't cook for shit.

'Should I come with you, Boss?' Doumeki had asked while hurtling through the sixth or seventh set of red lights.

'To Taiwan?'

'Yes.'

'Not this time.'

He hadn't offered a reason and Doumeki left it at that.

At the airport, he dragged Yashiro's roller bag for him to first-class check-in. A lot of people glanced up at the huge guy in the blood-and-brain stained sweatpants and inside-out tiger sweater.

The woman behind the counter was being impossible, her face steadily turning a colour that matched her scarlet uniform. Then Yashiro spoke to someone on his phone, who spoke to her, who spoke to someone slightly behind the scenes in a blazer, who apologised earnestly, took Yashiro's bag and told him to head for the gate at his earliest convenience, though he would be eternally grateful if his earliest convenience was somewhere in the next five minutes.

Yashiro left at a sauntering pace. Doumeki followed, impervious to stares.

'You smell awful by the way.'

'Sorry, Boss.'

'It's like you haven't been bathing.'

'I haven't.'

'Really?'

'Yes.'

'For how long?'

'Almost two weeks.'

'Jesus.'

They reached the security check. A few of the officers did a double take when they saw Doumeki.

'Can't go much further,' Yashiro said.

He turned to look at him properly. A laugh welled in his gut. The tiger sweater, whether inside out or not, would probably do that to him every time.

'Bring the car around when I say, okay?'

'Yes, Boss.'

'And, for the love of God, take a shower.'

The security officers were relieved when the large man covered in stains finally turned to go, though it wasn't until long after the other man had completely disappeared from view.


	5. Bite Me Somewhere

**Warning: Graphic fantasy sequence ahead**

* * *

 **Setting:** Hotel room in Taipei, Taiwan

 **Cast:** Yashiro (tired, bored, slightly sexually frustrated)

 **Train of thought:** Mob meeting; wondering who tried to off him last week; sex with Doumeki; sex with seven Doumeki's

He loosened his tie and fell on the bed with a huff, shoes still on. It was an overcast evening so sunset didn't make much of an impression over the Taipei skyline.

He would have loved cloaks, chants and virgin sacrifices. Instead it had been meeting after meeting after brown-nosing after schmoozing after drinking after bar after strip club. True, it was his first time understanding the extent of mob connections. The truly global nature of their particular industry. And he rather enjoyed Misumi shoving him into the limelight like a proud father. But everything else was a drag. Insurance salesmen at a conference. The only thing missing was name tags.

Misumi pulled him aside at one stage to tell him that Amou was trying to get to the bottom of the shoot-out the previous week.

'Thank him for me,' Yashiro said. 'Although, between you and me, I always thought he was a bit shady. I bet he's the mastermind behind all these kill-Yashiro plots.'

'He's on speakerphone and just heard you.'

' _Hello, Yashiro._ '

'Hey, Amou! I'm onto you.'

' _Okay._ '

The hotel room and its view were quite nice. The bed was huge. It reminded Yashiro of a wedding cake. He felt his body sink slowly into the depths of the cloud-like quilt. There was a complimentary chardonnay and glass sitting on the sideboard. All that was missing was a good, thick cock and a nice hard body attached to it. Maybe even a pair of intent slanted eyes over a solid jaw. Wide shoulders. Hands like dinner plates.

Closing his eyes, he recalled all the burning, searing, throbbing details of their single bout of sex-having. What a bout it had been.

He wondered how Doumeki would react if he told him it was the best sex he'd had. That he could remember. In recent memory, at the very least. Even with all those disclaimers, the poor boy's head would explode.

Yashiro propped his chin on his hand to consider the trophy more carefully. Okay, the best sex he'd had, in recent memory, with one person. It's not fair, after all, to put Doumeki up against three cocks working simultaneously. Or seven. You just can't beat math.

He suddenly imagined three Doumeki's. Seven Doumeki's. All trying to break him, all frustrated and trying to beat each other to him.

And with that image, he was at full mast. He reached for his phone.

It only took one ring.

'Boss?'

'What the… did you tape your phone to your forehead or something?'

'No.'

'Never mind. Get your cock out.'

'What?'

'The thing in your pants. Take it out. Now.'

'I'm at the grocery store.'

'Even better.'

A pause. Yashiro sighed and took pity on him.

'How far away is your place?'

'I drove.'

'Oh, good. Get in the car.'

Footsteps, a car door opening and closing. Yashiro took the opportunity to light a cigarette and unbuckle his belt to release his hard-on; an impressive sequence for a one-handed man on the phone, he thought.

'I'm in the car.'

'Is it secluded enough where you are?'

'It's… not too bad.'

'Take your cock out.'

Metallic clinks, a zipper. 'Okay.'

'Is it hard yet?'

'Not really.'

'Picture me sucking it.'

'Okay.'

'Start stroking.'

A short silence while Yashiro did the same. He placed his cigarette in the ashtray, put the phone on speaker, lay back and moved his hand over his dick at a measured pace, squeezing hard at the top, just enough to hurt.

'Your cock's in my mouth. And I'm jerking myself off. You taste good.'

He heard Doumeki breathe out slowly. He smiled to himself.

'Ever done this before?'

'Done what?'

'Phone sex.'

There was another silence. A thought occurred to Yashiro and he held back a laugh.

'You do _know_ this is phone sex, right?'

'I… it was… I'm just doing what Boss wanted me to.'

Yashiro chuckled softly. 'Jesus, Doumeki.'

A slight grunt. Doumeki seemed to be getting more worked up on his end.

'Hard now, right?'

'Boss?'

'Yeah?'

'Can you… can you say my name again?'

A slow smile crossed Yashiro's face. He sat up, hand still on his cock.

'Doumeki.'

Another low grunt.

'I'm getting up. Turning around. My ass is bare. I'm pulling my cheeks apart.'

Doumeki's breathing was ragged now.

'What are you going to do?' Yashiro prompted.

'I'm… putting it in.'

Yashiro clicked his tongue in frustration. 'What is this, soft core porn? Try again.'

'I'm… fucking you, Boss. I'm fucking you.'

 _And we're up and running._ Yashiro sped up his pace, his own breathing coming out in bursts.

'How does my ass feel?'

'Really good.'

'That's it?'

'Hot. Almost too hot.'

An unexpected flare of excitement. 'Fuck. Is there blood?'

'Uh… no?'

'What?'

'I mean, yes. You're… there's blood.'

'That's because you're so damn big, stupid.' Yashiro closed his eyes and let his head fall back on the bed again, his cock leaking precum at the memory of being torn open by Doumeki. 'When did you get so big, anyway?'

'I don't know.'

'Shut up.'

'Okay.'

'Bite something.'

'What?'

'Bite me somewhere.'

'I'm biting your… ear.'

'Ear? Okay. How?'

Sitting in his tiny Subaru a little ways in front of the grocery store, his phone in one hand and his cock in the other, Doumeki Chikara suddenly saw it all vividly. In that moment, of all moments. He slipped into the fantasy, a world that was hazy around the edges but bright and clear in the middle, where he was really fucking Yashiro on all fours. He followed his instincts.

'On the lobe. I pull at it really hard with my teeth. It tears a bit. It's bleeding there too.'

Yashiro clenched his teeth, pleasantly surprised. 'Shit.'

'And I'm biting your neck. Leaving marks. Deep ones.'

'There's another you,' Yashiro panted.

'Another me?'

'Yeah, a second Doumeki. In front of me. That's you as well. Shove your cock in my mouth.'

'Okay.'

'Can you feel your cock in my mouth and ass?'

It was a metaphysical struggle but Doumeki managed to do it.

'Yes.'

'How is it?'

'Good. Boss always feels good.'

'Do something with your hands. Both of you. Twist my nipples or something.'

'I've got my hands in your hair,' Doumeki said immediately. 'It's soft.'

 _This guy and my hair_ …

'I'm pulling it so I can fuck your throat better.'

 _There we go._

'And I'm… the other me… is also pulling it from behind.'

Yashiro squirmed. 'I'm close.'

Doumeki grunted in agreement. Their hands were flying over their cocks, their minds full of the same picture.

'Come inside me, Doumeki.'

'Yes, Boss.'

In a few more strokes, Yashiro gasped and came. He heard Doumeki growl softly over the line.

There was heavy breathing on the airwaves for a while afterwards. Yashiro floated in a white haze on his white cloud of a bed. _What... what was this?_ he wondered vaguely.

'Did you come?' he asked.

'Yes,' Doumeki replied between pants.

'Taste it.'

Doumeki hesitated. He lifted his fingers to his lips.

'How does it taste?'

'Weird. Bitter.'

'Kind of like mine?'

'Yours was better.'

Yashiro laughed. He wiped his hand with a tissue, brought the phone in close again and took it off speakerphone.

'Such good manners. Your mother taught you well.'

There was a long, satisfied silence.

'Boss?'

'Hmm?'

 _Are you okay what did you eat where are you going tomorrow who did you see today are you safe?_

'When are you coming back?'

'Don't know.' Yashiro yawned. 'When Misumi says to. Why, do you miss me already?'

'Yes.'

Yashiro's heart skipped a beat. Just one.

'Idiot. Keep something to yourself.'

'Sorry.'

Silence fell again. It settled between and around them comfortably. Yashiro felt his eyelids get heavier. He had to remember to take his shoes off. If Doumeki were here, he'd do it for him.

'Doumeki.'

'Yes, Boss?'

But he'd fallen asleep.

Doumeki didn't hang up. He drove home slowly, the phone wedged between his face and shoulder.


	6. Boss' Divine Skill

It made no sense for the word 'jealous' to even crop up in Misumi's mental vocabulary. He'd seen Yashiro covered in semen and being ravaged by five or six different guys at once. (That, in fact, was how they'd met.) He'd heard his own superiors snickering and bragging about their latest round with the public toilet. He'd watched Yashiro twisted in countless positions, seen him gag on a million dicks that weren't Misumi's, seen his insatiable lust for cock. Any cock.

And yet he'd felt an odd, unfamiliar surge of protectiveness teetering close to jealousy when he first laid eyes on that lumbering mastiff, Doumeki. 'Fire him,' he'd said immediately. (His philosophy had always been to conceal uncomfortable feelings with obvious, outward displays of those uncomfortable feelings.) Naturally, Yashiro had laughed and ignored him.

Misumi was confident Yashiro had never really known. And he wanted it to remain that way. Father and son. That's what he told himself, and anyone who would listen.

Only Amou had any inkling. It started that day he walked in on Misumi furiously jerking off to an old recording of himself thrusting into a twenty-year-old bound-and-gagged Yashiro on his office floor. He'd tried to pass it off as a horny old man reminiscing about his glory days, but something in Amou's judgmental/non-judgmental stare said he knew different. Misumi had always been slightly wary of him since.

Now, as they walked into the arrivals waiting area at Narita Airport in Tokyo, Misumi kept a fatherly (fatherly!) eye on Yashiro. No one else could have picked up on the tense, edgy anticipation that clung to Yashiro like an aura, the ironic smile he couldn't quite bat down when Doumeki came into view, his head and shoulders easily rising above the rest of the crowd.

And then he became aware that Amou was watching him watching Yashiro watching Doumeki watching Yashiro. He sighed at that pathetic train and broke it by looking away.

'I'll see you, Yashiro,' he said, turning to go.

At first Misumi thought he hadn't heard. But then Yashiro turned, threw Misumi a warm grin and raised his hand in that casual, lazy way of his.

* * *

'Did you buy the cushion I texted you about?'

'Yes, Boss.'

Doumeki lifted Yashiro's bag into the trunk of the spotless new Lexus. Yashiro stretched and took in a deep lungful of air.

'Good. Toss it on the backseat. My ass is sore like you wouldn't believe.'

He timed it well (counted to three) then laughed at Doumeki's expression.

'From sitting in one place for four hours. Your jealousy should be a national pastime, it's so entertaining.'

To be fair, it hadn't been an expression so much as a tell-tale blink; a blink that was only an iota more forced than any other blink. But Yashiro had picked up on it. He now considered himself an expert in this vein.

The inside of the Lexus was infused with the scent of expensive leather. Yashiro ran a hand appreciatively over the smooth seats.

'Should I take you to yours, Boss?'

'Yes. No. I don't know.'

Eyes in the rear view mirror, waiting.

'Let's just drive. We'll see where we end up. People don't drive for the fun of it anymore. Why is that?'

Doumeki started the car and thought about it seriously. 'Gas prices. Global warming. Traffic congestion. Lack of free ti–'

'That's the most words I've ever heard you say in a row.'

Doumeki heard the ice in his tone and clammed up quickly.

The Lexus blended in with afternoon traffic headed for central Tokyo. There was a gentle mist of rain in the air that required an occasional flick of the wipers.

'How was your trip, Boss?' he asked at length.

'Oh, you know. Pretty average. Hirata was there. That was fun. I smiled and shook hands with him and he went all these different shades of red. It's like everyone knows he tried to kill me but no one's done anything about it yet. Misumi slammed him in one of the meetings about something unrelated. Like he was waiting for an excuse to do it. Can't remember what he said exactly but I nearly wet myself laughing afterwards. He's a good Oyaji*, that Misumi.'

Doumeki took the next exit on a whim. He felt his limbs loosen and his mind relax. Boss had a point. People should drive just for the sake of it more often.

'Misumi also figured out who organised that shooting a week ago,' Yashiro added.

'Was it Hirata?'

'Not exactly. It's a long, boring story.'

The rain came down a touch more heavily.

'But anyway. Taipei was nice enough.' He reached for a cigarette. 'The men there are bigger than they are here.'

He leaned forwards and blew the smoke from his first drag near Doumeki's ear. He draped his left arm across the top of the driver's seat.

'Not quite in your league though.'

Doumeki felt Yashiro's breath on his neck and kept his eyes on the road.

'Would you believe me if I said I didn't have sex with anyone there?'

Doumeki didn't know how to respond.

'For a whole week. Not a single dick. Not even a hand-job under the desk in one of the meetings. I nearly died from withdrawal. Want to know how I kept from going crazy?'

Doumeki steeled himself. 'How?'

'Phone sex.' He smiled. 'And not the kind you're thinking of. That was fun too, I guess. A bit jarring in places because you're such a relentless moron, but not bad. I'm talking about a different kind of phone sex.'

His finger traced the scar on Doumeki's cheek.

'See, I did consider fucking some of the guys there. There were a few lookers, too. But the last time I got fucked was by you and I didn't feel like being disappointed by a cock that didn't quite measure up. It's always a gamble how big the machinery is when the clothes come off. What to do? Conundrum, isn't it? So I started improvising. With people, it's a gamble. But as for your basic, everyday objects just lying around in, say, a hotel room, there's an open honesty to them, isn't there?'

Doumeki tried to follow his boss' narrative as he made an arbitrary left turn. Whether he understood properly or not, he was aware of two things. **1:** The front of his pants was getting tighter. **2:** _Boss hasn't slept with anyone else since me._

'Let's take a wine bottle, for instance. A nice tapered neck, a decent girth. Slipped in like a charm.'

The picture emerged vividly and Doumeki's cock was painfully hard.

'But it wasn't wide enough. So I moved on. It was like sampling things at a fair. The shampoo bottles, the handle of the blow dryer, the TV remote, even the little vase that had a single rose in it. But none of them quite did the trick. I kept picturing your cock, after all. Hard to live up to. And then I saw the phone. Just one of those cordless hotel phones they put on the bedside table. Thick and black. Too thick. And it fit perfectly with the image in my head.'

Yashiro glanced down, pleased at the reaction his words were eliciting.

'That phone made me come about fifteen times in total during the trip.' He slid his hand down Doumeki's chest. 'We have this deep, emotional connection now. Almost wish I'd smuggled it back with me. Phone sex,' he summarised. 'Clever, right?'

He slipped his hand past Doumeki's belt and held his erection in his hand for the first time. He exhaled happily.

'How the hell did you manage to keep this a secret?' Yashiro murmured.

Doumeki's breathing suffered under the warmth and insistence of Yashiro's hand. He wondered for the umpteenth time why he hadn't been given the boot. Properly, anyway. He knew he'd rather slice off another finger before he dared to ask the question.

'I still haven't been able to give you a blow job while you're hard,' Yashiro complained in his smooth-as-silk voice. 'I tried to before but you stopped me with that useless make out session instead.'

'Was I bad at that, Boss?' Doumeki didn't even realise it was something he was worried about until he spoke.

Yashiro remembered his tongue and hands, the weight of his torso pushing him against the car.

Instead of replying, he heaved himself up and squeezed into the front passenger seat. Doumeki threw him a nervous sideways glance. Yashiro took a few more deep drags before flicking his cigarette out the window. He then bent over and unzipped Doumeki's pants.

'I'll pull over.'

'No need.'

Yashiro planned to devour his cock as soon as he saw it but he actually took a second, resting his head on his hand on Doumeki's lap, to marvel. Perfect curve, thickness, length, head. A cock designed in a lab.

Somewhere miles above, Doumeki resisted the urge to close his eyes. Sweat had gathered on his face.

Then Yashiro swallowed him whole, in one move, right to the base. Doumeki gasped. The Lexus swerved over the median strip before righting itself.

* * *

 **Highlights from Doumeki's first real blow job from his boss:**

-Boss' divine skill: Lips, hand, tongue, throat, even a flash of teeth to keep him on edge. Not to mention suction, friction, speed. It was the best blow job of his life by a mile and a half.

-The sounds Boss made: Moans near the tip that sent vibrations to all of Doumeki's extremities, and choking gags when he took him deep into his throat.

-Taking the initiative: Reached an arm over Yashiro's stooped form and wrenched his pants off his hips and ass where it was hovering in the air, exposing white skin. Then he spat on his fingers, found the opening and pushed in.

-The new sounds Boss made: An anthology of desperate moans and whimpers, pulsing to Doumeki's fingers, all of which Doumeki felt through his cock.

 **Major detractors during Doumeki's first real blow job from his boss:**

-Boss' hair being off-limits: Tried to touch it once, causing Yashiro to pull off his cock and slap his hand away. 'At least one hand on the wheel. Your driving's been bad enough since I started.'

-Inability to multitask: Didn't check blind spot during lane change, narrowly avoided killing a cyclist.

-Terrible driving alerting patrol car: Blue and red flashed through the rain behind them. Boss stopped sucking briefly to tell him to pull over, voice like a razor blade.

-Boss' innate love of voyeurism: Even when they were parked on the side of the road and the cop was walking up to them, pad in hand, Yashiro's mouth and hand kept at it. Doumeki's powers of concentration were now entirely focused on not coming.

-Boss and the cop knowing each other: Pleasantries were exchanged, Yashiro smiling calmly from Doumeki's lap beside his stiff, precum-leaking cock. Between the cop and Doumeki, it was hard to say who was the more uncomfortable. Doumeki kept his gaze trained through the windshield.

-Boss and the cop knowing each other in _that_ way: 'Been a while since you were in this big guy's place, hasn't it?' The cop, getting steadily more wet in the rain, was bright crimson at this point.

-Boss inviting the cop to join in: 'There's an unused hole back there.' Voice like silk again. The cop stared, flabbergasted, at Yashiro's bare ass. Palpable tug of temptation. But then he caught Doumeki's eye for the first time and blanched. From where he was, Yashiro didn't catch the very clear _Touch my boss and die_ signals being transmitted by his bodyguard. Cop politely refused, issued weak warning about safe driving, retreated into the rain.

* * *

A few blocks later, the Lexus glided through a quiet residential area and Doumeki came hard into Yashiro's mouth. He kept thrusting his fingers into Yashiro's ass until he finished too.

After a half-minute of gasping and breath-catching, Yashiro turned over onto his back and lay with his head on Doumeki's lap, legs splayed over the back of the passenger seat and the dashboard.

'Such a bad place to put a handbrake,' he said, shifting slightly.

'You okay, Boss?'

'Peachy.'

Doumeki pulled his gaze from the road for as long as he dared. Yashiro's eyes were closed. Sanguine smile. The picture of contentment.

Either the rain let up or they'd driven far enough to have outrun it. Doumeki made more turns on autopilot, his mind a pleasant blank. He was starting to get hungry but he would happily drive to all the way to the Sea of Japan if Yashiro didn't tell him to stop.

'I'm hungry,' Yashiro declared. 'Where are we?'

Doumeki focused on the road. He suddenly recognised it.

'Uh…'

'What?'

Yashiro opened his eyes lazily. Doumeki always looked good from this angle, he thought.

When no reply was forthcoming, he tried again. 'Where've you taken us?'

Doumeki couldn't be sure when exactly it happened, especially because he certainly hadn't taken the shortest route from the airport, but when his conscious mind switched off, it appeared he had blindly steered them to his own neighbourhood. His apartment was about two minutes away.

'We're near my place.'

Yashiro lifted his eyebrows.

'The Doumeki residence. How intriguing.'

Doumeki was suddenly nervous. The image came to him; Boss with his perfect hair, clean-cut shoulders, glossy vest, left hand in his pocket, standing in his small, very average flat, where just around the corner lurked that damned rust-speckled towel railing. The image didn't seem real.

'We can go somewhere else -'

'Nope.'

'There's a restaurant just around -'

'Nope.'

'But there's nothing to eat at my -'

'I'm sure you can scrounge something together.' Yashiro sat up in the passenger's seat and lit another cigarette. His eyes twinkled beneath half-lids. 'So we're all in agreement? Great. Your place it is.'


	7. Murakami and Soap

**Warning: Explicitness ahead.**

* * *

 **Setting:** Doumeki's one-bedroom flat, immediately after Yashiro's return from Taiwan

 **Cast:** Yashiro (perfect hair, clean-cut shoulders, glossy vest, left hand in his pocket, standing in the small, very average flat) and Doumeki (very conscious about the rust-speckled towel railing around the corner)

 **Topic of conversation:** Food

Doumeki opened pantry doors, drawers, the fridge and freezer. Fare that would have disappointed even a college student.

'Nothing?'

'Nothing.'

'Can't be _nothing_ , come on. Just list everything you have.'

Pulse thudding, Doumeki watched him out of the corner of his eye. He seemed utterly at ease, walking slowly around the coffee table, taking in the room, scrutinising the single photo of Doumeki with his sister he'd only recently propped up.

'Uh… bread, salt, cumin, gherkins -'

A snort of laughter. ' _Gherkins?_ '

'Jam, raisin bran cereal, canned beetroot. And a grapefruit.'

'Sounds like we're having jam sandwiches and cereal. You have milk, right?'

'No.'

'Oh. Dry cereal then. Grapefruit and gherkins for dessert.'

'Boss, there's a restaurant nearby.'

'I said I want to eat here.'

'We could order in.'

'We could,' he admitted. Doumeki breathed easier. 'As long as we invite the delivery guy to join us in the bedroom.'

'...I'll make the sandwiches.'

'Great.'

Doumeki took out the loaf of bread. His ears rang with the word 'us'.

Yashiro, enjoying himself immensely, sat on the couch and flicked through the paperback that had been on the coffee table, a page marked with a dog-ear. Doumeki read novels. Well, at least one novel. Who knew?

As soon as he'd stepped through the door, Yashiro felt oddly relaxed, almost as though he'd been there before. Which made it all the more entertaining to watch the reverse effect taking place in his host. He eyed Doumeki's uneasy form, which seemed too large and cumbersome for the kitchen. It had been a similar situation last time, Yashiro recalled. One minute, Doumeki was in the kitchen making lunch, the next Yashiro was facedown on the bed with Doumeki's cock angrily sawing in and out of him.

 _Mmm. Settle down._

'I might take a bath first.'

Doumeki turned. 'I'll draw you one.'

In the bathroom, waiting for the tub to fill, Doumeki waged a silent war on the rusty towel railing. After scrubbing failed, he grabbed three towels from the cupboard and covered the metal bar completely. Then he folded another towel on the toilet seat for Yashiro, hoping the railing's secret would never be exposed. He was aware he was probably well on the way to losing his mind.

Yashiro, meanwhile, wandered into the bedroom. Much like the living room. Simple, sparsely decorated, warm. He opened the blinds. Twelfth storey view of the neighbourhood, partially obscured by the building next door. Sunlight filtered weakly through clouds.

He squinted. There was something familiar about the nearby park. The tree line and benches. The church. Even the homeless man crouched at its entrance. The nearby bus station. _Was that…?_ He spun the scene around in his mind, trying to find a familiar angle, gather his bearings. If it was… then the house would be… He followed the mental line he traced.

There. Partially (thankfully) obscured by a rise in the land and surrounding houses. His old neighbourhood.

His bodyguard lived a stone's throw away from his childhood home. Of course he did, the insensitive moron.

The depth of his vision increased. Like state-of-the-art military tech, his eyes selected an area, focused, selected a smaller area, focused again. He saw through earth and concrete and time. Someone sitting on the windowsill, facing away. A kid in a school uniform. Sobbing uncontrollably through clenched teeth. Tears flowing like someone had swung an axe into a water pipe. He couldn't stop crying and Yashiro couldn't look away.

'Bath's ready, Boss.'

Doumeki waited at the door, one of his sleeves rolled to the elbow. Yashiro stood still for another moment before pulling away from the window, his face suddenly in shadow. Doumeki blinked. The change was immediate and striking.

Yashiro breezed past him, unbuttoning his vest one-handed.

'Do you need me to…?'

'I'm fine.'

The bathroom door slammed closed.

* * *

Doumeki didn't have time to worry about what he could have done wrong. While he had the chance, he fixed up the apartment as best as he could. He straightened cushions, wiped countertops, swept floors, even changed his bedspread with a self-conscious flush.

Then he went to the kitchen and stared hopelessly at the slices of bread half-smeared with jam. He couldn't serve that to Boss. He grabbed his keys and took a whole seven steps out the front door before remembering that the last time he'd left the boss alone, the boss had been shot three times. He went back inside.

* * *

The water calmed him. He also liked the coconut-like smell of the soap. Doumeki read novels. And used scented soap. Who knew? Perhaps he even did both at the same time. Yashiro's laugh echoed in the small space.

Splashing water onto his face, he chided himself for getting pulled so easily into angst. He'd never before let himself turn into a battling-with-old-demons cliché. Sure, life had sucked back then, back when he was too young and weak to do anything about it. But didn't all of that make him who he was now? And didn't he like who he was now? The kid in the uniform, crying over something Kageyama had said to him in passing, that was just a character from a dog-eared paperback he'd read a long time ago.

He let his right hand sink pointlessly to the bottom of the tub.

* * *

Doumeki was torn between cutting the crusts off and leaving them on when he heard Boss leave the bathroom and call for him. He wiped his hands on the side of his pants.

Yashiro was standing at the bedroom window again, damp from the bath and completely naked but for his sling. He didn't seem angry anymore, Doumeki observed with relief. Then he observed everything else and his face coloured.

'I didn't know you read Murakami,' Yashiro said, sounding vaguely amused. 'Actually, I was surprised you know how to read at all. But Murakami was even more unexpected.'

Doumeki flashed to his copy of _Wild Sheep Chase_ on the coffee table.

'He's okay, I guess.'

'You seem too… unimaginative. To put up with Murakami's crap.'

Doumeki stared at the lithe, slender muscles of his back and legs. They reminded him of a large, sleek cat of some kind. His pulse picked up. _Boss said something_ , he told himself furiously. _Now it's your turn._

'He…' He tried thinking about the book. 'I like that none of his characters ever seem to know what's going on. Even at the end.'

Yashiro turned to him. Their eyes met for a while. Then Yashiro smiled slowly.

'Have you ever read in the bathtub?'

'Uh… no. I don't think so.'

Yashiro chuckled. He tossed the towel on the floor and walked towards him.

'By the way,' he said as he drew near. 'You should replace your towel railing in the bathroom.'

* * *

Doumeki wanted to kiss him again, even more than he wanted to touch his hair, but somehow he couldn't co-ordinate himself well enough. Still, he was far from unhappy. Boss was spread-eagled beneath him and he had three fingers in him again, probing and stretching. He watched Yashiro's expressions for a while, revelled in the sharp sighs, before bending low to take his cock into his mouth. Boss' fingers in his hair.

He swapped his hand and mouth. Yashiro moaned and pushed Doumeki's head closer with his hand, forcing his tongue in deeper.

Doumeki was nearing his limit. But he persevered. From the outset, he had lashed several reigns and bits and bridles and blinkers on himself. This was not going to be a repeat of last time. He was going to do it right. No blood, no tears, no wounded arms getting tortured. He massaged Yashiro's hole with generous amounts of spit, taking his time. Still, it didn't seem like enough.

Yashiro seemed to have the same thought.

'Get the lube,' he said breathlessly.

Doumeki raised his head. 'I don't have any.'

Yashiro looked at him incredulously before realising.

'Oh. Right. Lube's not high on the grocery list if you're impotent, I guess.'

Doumeki didn't reply.

'Do you have Vaseline?'

'No.'

'Some kind of lotion?'

'No.'

'Olive oil?'

Silence.

'Go get it.'

Doumeki wordlessly left the bed. Back in the kitchen, beside jam sandwiches that were getting stale in the open air, he found a half-empty bottle of olive oil and stared at it philosophically. He reflected that he was standing in _his_ kitchen holding _his_ olive oil and he would walk back to _his_ bedroom to fuck _his_ boss on _his_ bed.

 _Bertolli's Extra Virgin_ , the label said _._ Very funny.

When Doumeki returned, Yashiro was supremely annoyed with himself for managing to feel, of all things, nervous. It must be Doumeki's stupid face, he decided. That face that revealed nothing. How can he be so damn expressionless?

As he slipped his oiled fingers deep into Yashiro, Doumeki watched him closely. The head turned to the side, the eyes that kept watching from the corners, the gasping mouth. What was that look exactly? Reluctant? Unsure? Could he go so far as shy?

'Fuck me already, you idiot.'

Okay, not as far as shy.

But that look was still there. Uncertainty mixed with eagerness. Despite his boss' prolific sexual past, it excited Doumeki to see that he could still wear a face like that. Then he felt a jolt. Could it be that Boss was only like that... with him?

He put aside that dangerous thought and pushed his cock in.

His size alone knocked the breath from Yashiro's body. He shivered.

 _Careful_ , Doumeki reminded himself as the heat and tightness claimed him immediately. He started thrusting with short, powerful jabs at first. He lifted Yashiro's hips off the bed and held him there while he fucked into him. Yashiro watched through eyes clouded by lust.

 _Hold it back. Go up to eighty percent. No, sixty percent. No more. You're not your father._

Unaware of this train of thought, Yashiro's initial ecstasy was fast waning.

With all that lube and preparation, with Doumeki's careful adjustment of speed, it didn't take long for him to get used to Doumeki's size. There was no room for pain.

And in place of pain came irritation. And a bad memory trying to surface.

Doumeki lowered Yashiro's hips to the bed, crawled forwards and kissed him.

The memory surfaced. The guy from over a decade ago. The guy Hirata had assigned to take care of him back when he first started. The guy, Yashiro realised suddenly, who had a scar in almost the exact place that Doumeki had his. The guy who'd wanted Yashiro to look at him and kiss him during sex. The loving caresses. The nausea. Yashiro felt a surge of it again.

'Stop.'

After a few more thrusts, Doumeki froze.

'This is bullshit.'

Doumeki felt his words like a cold, bitter wind.

'What is?'

'You treating me like I'm your junior high girlfriend again. Do you really think I'll be able to come from that?'

Doumeki's cock was still buried deep inside his ass, Yashiro's legs hooked over his shoulders.

'I...'

Yashiro searched his face. _Where's that other Doumeki?_

'No point playing innocent. I've seen what you can do.' His eyes were piercing. Demanding. 'Do it again.'

Doumeki lifted up a bit. Then he looked away.

A much larger wave of disgust washed over Yashiro.

'Get off.'

Doumeki pulled out completely and sat back on the bed.

Yashiro lay there, angrier and more sexually frustrated than he'd been in years. He really should have stolen that hotel phone.

* * *

Hotel phone.

Idea.

He glanced at Doumeki. The posterchild of shame and defeat. Brows knit, eyes downcast.

 _Where's that other Doumeki? How can we make him come out and play again?_

'I lied about not having fucked anyone in Taipei.'

Again, it wasn't really an expression that gave him away. This time it was an undefinable freezing of features. The reaction sparked something in Yashiro that had been missing over the past few minutes.

'Did you really think I'd hold out for a week? I know you're an idiot, but come on. Even you should have seen through that. There were three in total. At separate times at first, then all at once. None of them were as big as you, but I'm not exactly known for being picky.'

He wished he was near his cigarettes. Instead he crossed his legs and lifted up onto his elbow.

'I wasn't entirely lying about the phone sex. It just wasn't my idea. One of the guys thought of it. He just picked it up and fucked me with it out of nowhere. The man was a true artist.' He sighed dramatically. 'It was a great trip, really. I downplayed it a tiny bit.'

 _And now for the coup de grace._ 'In fact, I'm pretty sure one of them lives nearby. Close enough anyway. What do you say to hosting a little Taipei reunion at your place?'

Doumeki hadn't met his eyes the whole time. He memorised the light zigzag pattern of quilt. Clenched jaw and clenched fists were the only things that gave him away.

Yashiro sighed. _Really? How much further do I need to go?_

'Bring me my phone.'

Doumeki finally looked up. There was a brief impasse. Then he got up slowly. Yashiro noticed with malevolent satisfaction that his cock had completely deflated. It was like seeing an old friend.

After handing him his phone, Doumeki retreated a few steps.

Yashiro dialled and waited, staring out the window. Doumeki heard the click of the line being picked up. A man's voice answering.

'Toruda!' Yashiro said warmly. 'How are you? It's Yashiro… I know, it's only been twenty-four hours since our little rendezvous in the men's room, but what can I say? I miss you already.'

Doumeki knew he should leave but he was rooted to the spot. He tuned in and out of the conversation, heard the feedback of the voice on the other end, loathing it passionately. His mouth tasted like vinegar.

Rust. Never in his life had his inadequacies been revealed so cruelly. He longed for the glory days of his impotence.

Yashiro glanced at him only once, coldly, to ask him what his address was. Doumeki recited it like a robot. He felt something building like a flood coursing into the bottom of a tower and surging its way up. His fists shook.

'Bring toys, there's nothing fun in this dump,' he heard at one stage. Yashiro, who was still hard, started jerking himself off indolently. 'Dildos, beads, the works. Rope too.'

In the background of Yashiro's brilliant plan, he hit upon an even more brilliant name drop. He doubted his frazzled audience would notice how thinly he was stretching the bounds of plausibility.

'Oh, is Nakazawa there? Excellent.'

His instinct was spot on. Doumeki heard a snap. A leathery sort of snap.

'No, he's definitely welcome, the more the merr –'

He felt a strange mix of relief and excitement when he felt Doumeki's hand close over his wrist like a vice. The phone clattered to the floor and Yashiro was pushed face down on the bed.

* * *

Nanahara had been doing a terrible job trying to apply antiseptic to his wounded shoulder when the phone rang. He cursed everyone from his mother to God when he saw it was the boss calling. There was no way he could ignore it. (He'd already gotten an earful for not answering when Boss was involved in the recent shoot-out. It didn't seem to matter that it was because he was at the hospital with a needle going in and out of his shoulder at the time.)

So, with blood and antiseptic smearing all over the phone and its buttons, Nanahara had picked up.

'Hey, Boss.'

'Toruda!' the boss had called merrily. 'How are you? It's Yashiro.'

'What? Who's Toruda? You've called Nahahara.'

'I know, it's only been twenty-four hours since our little rendezvous in the men's room –'

'Men's room?'

'- but what can I say? I miss you already.'

'What the fuck are you talking about?'

And so on and so forth. He tried over and over to make Yashiro understand he'd gotten the wrong number but the man seemed intent on pursuing his bizarre one-sided conversation. Nanahara's shoulder was stinging like crazy. He soon lost all patience.

'THIS ISN'T TORUDA! AND I DON'T KNOW WHO THE HELL NAKAZAWA IS EITHER!'

Then it sounded like Yashiro dropped the phone.

'Boss?'

A few seconds later, Nahahara heard him gasping and crying out. He was at a loss. Should he call for help? Had that been an elaborate code to get Yashiro out of trouble?

' _Fuck, yes. Ugh! Harder!_ '

His mind switched gears again and he flushed. Right. Okay.

New dilemma. Was he supposed to keep listening? Was that part of the game?

He pulled the phone away, stared at it, felt a guilty tingling and set it back to his ear.

More moans and cries. Pleas. Desperate and fraught. It sounded like he was really getting it hard.

Nanahara was in a bind. If he hung up, he would miss the show. If he jerked off, he might get in trouble. His peeking fines had already piled up, in the boss' own words. Did this count as peeking?

He settled for halfway. In case this was still some kind of a code or a game where Boss had called him deliberately, he felt it was his duty to listen in. He told his cock to behave and kept the phone to his ear. Sweat broke out in places.

Eventually, the moaning gave way to: ' _My arm. Twist it again._ '

Jesus H. Christ. That was one messed up fucker Yashiro had found.

Yashiro screamed.

Then Nanahara heard another voice. And recognised it.

And hung up.

After a few seconds of silence, he wiped his forehead, tried to reconcile what he'd just heard with his old vision of Doumeki Chikara and went back to nursing his wound.


	8. The Initials K K

**The actual sex (overheard by Nanahara):**

First, Yashiro's face was smothered in the quilt and Doumeki, who couldn't recall the precise moment his erection had re-emerged, drove it into him without a word or sound. Every time Yashiro moaned, Doumeki slammed into him harder and pushed his face further into the mattress.

Next, he pulled Yashiro's hair back so hard and fast his neck hurt. He gasped sharply for the first time in open air.

'Fuck, yes. Ugh! Harder!'

Next, Doumeki squeezed the pale white cheeks between which his cock was barrelling in and out and he caved to the urge to mark the skin. His hand came down hard; several belts in quick succession. Angry hand prints emerged after each cry from Yashiro.

Next, he turned him over, pushed in again at the same moment that he covered Yashiro's mouth with his own, this time biting his bottom lip so hard he tasted blood. Yashiro whimpered into his mouth and tried to angle his face away to catch his breath but Doumeki didn't let up. For long minutes as he fucked Boss, the red, metallic taste swirled and danced around both their tongues. When Doumeki finally pulled up and Yashiro got an eyeful of his bloodstained lips, he knew he was a goner.

'My arm. Twist it again!'

He was hoping Doumeki would tear the sling off but Doumeki almost did one better. He traced his way down Yashiro's abdomen, his fingertips carrying all the deceptive gentleness of a sniffer dog. Then he found the place, the scar from the third gunshot wound. Just as Yashiro caught on to what he was about to do, he pressed the scar as far into his flesh as it would go.

Yashiro screamed and came. Doumeki came silently but just as hard.

 **The aftermath:**

'Boss?' he mumbled in a daze.

( _Exit Nanahara_ )

It was a rerun of the last aftermath. First the recon (shivering body, bleeding lip, damningly red bullet wound) then the immediate self-loathing. Only this time the nausea was stronger. Without another word, he left the room. Breathing hard, Yashiro smiled at the ceiling.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Dr Guilt-Ridden-Doting-Bodyguard Jekyll and Mr Reluctant-But-Fantastic-Sadist Hyde. That was probably what the guy originally intended to write, Yashiro decided. Before 19th century English (or whatever) editors censored him.

Doumeki stood in the bathroom for a while. Then he sat on the edge of the bathtub with his head hung for a slightly longer while. He tasted blood.

When he returned, Yashiro was sitting up against the bedhead and smoking, looking entirely at ease. Happy, even. He'd wiped most of the blood off his mouth but the cut was still open and oozing slightly.

'Let me guess. You went and sat on the toilet lid with your head hung?' he said with a smile, propping his face up between his thumb and index finger. 'Can you try not to battle your demons so obviously? It's boring.'

His eyes travelled down the wide expanse of Doumeki's chest, his large arms, balled fists and only half-flaccid cock. Possibly his favourite cock of all time, Yashiro thought. In recent memory, anyway, he amended again.

'I…'

Doumeki stared at a place on the carpet.

'You…?' Yashiro goaded.

'I quit.'

A brief silence.

'Really? Fake resigning so soon after being fake fired?'

'It's… it's not fake.'

Yashiro stretched his legs out and folded them.

'For one thing, I'm sure there's a HR rule somewhere that says you can't be naked when you hand in your official resignation.'

He knew he was dealing with a scared, confused little boy throwing a grown-up tantrum. Swinging Doumeki back around was going to be a no-brainer. But his heart hammered anyway. He had no idea that he was having enough of an effect on the man for him to put his precious job on the line. How wonderful.

'Stop hovering in the doorway. Sit down.'

Doumeki sat on the edge of the bed by his feet. Yashiro swelled his cheeks and blew air out noisily.

'Why do you want to quit?'

Pause.

'I don't want to hurt Boss anymore.'

'I think you do. You should see yourself when you do it. It's like you're inspired.'

No response.

'I like being hurt,' Yashiro said slowly. Masochism 101. He thought about Doumeki's blinding jealousy and rage. 'And I like hurting you.'

He took a drag and blew smoke towards Doumeki but he was too far away for it to reach.

'Don't you want to be hurt by me?'

 _I want you to do whatever you want to me_ , Doumeki thought.

Yashiro waited for a response and then sighed.

'You're not quitting. Frankly, that was a lame attempt at even pretending.'

'But –'

' _But Boss, I'm a huge pussy and I don't want to hurt you anymore even though it feels like heaven when I'm doing it_.' He'd raised the pitch of his voice and nearly stopped to laugh at himself. ' _So I'm putting my foot down. Absolutely not. I absolutely quit._ Well,' he said, switching back to normal. 'I didn't know you were so eloquent, Doumeki. If you're going to play hardball, maybe there's something I can do to sweeten the deal.'

His words brought Doumeki to the prologue of Time Number 5. He'd said the same thing to Ota in almost the same tone. Doumeki tensed.

'You remember Nakazawa, right?'

His jaw clenched on cue. Yashiro licked a fresh drop of blood off his lip.

'Oh, you don't remember? Gorgeous face, amazing hands, merciless in bed. Let's see… oh, yeah really tall. Taller than you, if I recall. Ringing any bells yet?'

'Yes.' All the hatred he could muster in one syllable.

'He organised the shooting.'

Doumeki looked at him for the first time. Yashiro inclined his head in confirmation.

'Matsubara wants me dead too now. Misumi dug around and found out they joined ranks with Hirata in his evil plot for world domination. But Hirata's lying low after his first attempt at killing me. He's letting Nakazawa and the Matsubara group do the dirty work for a while.'

Doumeki processed. Going up against both Hirata and Matsubara Group was going to be tough. Boss was in more danger than ever. And that bastard Nakazawa. If he ever saw him again, he'd do more this time than just punch him in the jaw.

'Have you ever killed anyone, Doumeki?'

Yashiro's voice was suddenly quiet. Silence slithered into the room in its wake.

Doumeki thought about his father. He remembered how his head had flopped back almost sadly each time he pummelled his fist into it. He remembered letting the body fall like a rag doll to the floor. Dead, he thought. I want you to be dead.

He wasn't, as it turned out. Close but no cigar.

'No.'

'It's a feeling like no other.' Yashiro's eyes had taken on the cold glint of steel. 'You channel every part of you that wants to cause hurt and you focus it into one sharp, lethal little point. What happens after that is beautiful.'

Doumeki held his gaze. For once, he understood the rest of the situation before Yashiro explained it.

'So here's the deal sweetener. I'm a little annoyed at Nakazawa. I've decided to send him and Matsubara a message from their friends at Shinseikai. If you're interested in retaining your job…' He watched Doumeki carefully. 'I'll let you kill him.'

There was a note of fatalism in the air. As soon as Yashiro said it, Doumeki saw himself standing over Nakazawa's corpse. It had already been decided. It had already happened.

'Yes, Boss,' he said anyway.

'Great.' The cigarette was stubbed out on the underside of Doumeki's bedside lamp. 'You drive a hard bargain.'

* * *

Less than five minutes later, the unsteady peace they thus reached was completely shattered.

'How are those jam sandwiches coming along?' Yashiro had asked suddenly. It was impossible to tell from his tone that they'd discussed murdering another human being only seconds ago.

So Doumeki had pulled on some underwear and returned to the kitchen like a boomerang. He threw the stale sandwiches into the bin and fished out the last remaining slices from the bread bag. Boss would get the real slices and he would have to make do with the end slices that were really all crust. He didn't mind them.

He was slowly spreading jam into the corners when Yashiro ambled into the kitchen looking for a more convenient ashtray.

'You look good in just underwear,' he said approvingly.

Intuiting what he needed, Doumeki retrieved a shot glass from an overhead cupboard and put it on the countertop. Yashiro tapped some ash into it and kept smoking.

Doumeki caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of his eye and then turned his head fully. He was wearing Doumeki's shirt and nothing else. The shoulders were too wide, sleeves were too long, and the shirt tails only barely covered everything. It was all just very good; somehow even more alluring than when he'd seen him completely naked.

Yashiro basked in his gaze for another moment or two before deciding to destroy the moment. He touched his cheek.

'Oh. Is there come on my face?'

Doumeki turned back to the sandwiches. Yashiro watched his hands.

'Crusts off.'

When Doumeki was done, Yashiro picked up the sandwich from the chopping board and took a large bite.

'Fuck,' he said thickly. 'I don't know if it's because the last time I ate was on a plane or what but this is damn good. Make another one.'

Doumeki felt a disproportionate amount of pride. Yashiro settled on the couch to polish off the sandwich, happily indulging in his sweet tooth.* He glanced again at _Wild Sheep Chase_ on the coffee table.

'I'm staying the night,' he announced over his shoulder.

'Okay.'

'Maybe also start slicing the grapefruit for dessert.'

'Okay.'

The tang of blood suddenly leaked in with the jam. He touched his lip. He remembered how Doumeki had bitten and pulled.

'Where do you keep your Band-Aids?'

'In the drawer in the bathroom. I'll get one for you.'

'I'll get it. Keep those sandwiches coming.'

If Doumeki had insisted on getting him the Band-Aids, it wouldn't have happened.

As Yashiro walked to the bathroom, Doumeki was in a tiny, blissful world that had been created in the aftermath of Yashiro's praise. He remained there for the next thirty seconds as Yashiro glanced at his own reflection in the mirror, enjoying the sight of his swollen lower lip, and then reached for the drawer under the sink.

The moment was simultaneous. In the kitchen, Doumeki's heart leapt to his throat at the same time that Yashiro looked down and saw it.

A contact lens container. Marked with the initials K. K.

Doumeki dropped the knife and ran towards the bathroom. He didn't have to go far. Yashiro stood in front of the bathroom door, fist clenched around the small white case.

His face at that moment scared Doumeki more than anything else he'd ever seen.

Yashiro felt only numb, blinding anger. He took in Doumeki's petrified expression without any satisfaction whatsoever. He wanted him to hurt more.

'Why did you take it?'

The question was simple.

Doumeki didn't answer. He couldn't.

Yashiro tried again, keeping his voice low. Dangerous.

'Why did you take it?'

 _Because you're in love with him and I hate that you are._

'I... I don't know, Boss.'

Yashiro stared at him for a moment longer. The light, carefree happiness he'd felt not long ago was a distant dream. Reality was suddenly the decades of pent-up longing for one man. The silent prayers. The fear of rejection. The loneliness of a schoolboy crying his eyes out in an empty house.

The first blow was the same as the one in the hotel hallway; an exceptionally strong backhand right across Doumeki's scar.

Doumeki staggered. Then he felt Yashiro's knee collide with his stomach and he fell, winded and gasping, in a heap on the floor.

Another kick to his stomach. He curled in.

And then, before Yashiro could control himself, one to his face. White flashed before Doumeki's eyes and his nose made an awful sound.

Yashiro's eyes were livid. Manic. Humiliated. It was with an immense force of will that he managed to stop himself.

He had forgotten Doumeki completely. He had transformed into the person who, without a second thought, had beaten Nanahara senseless and delivered him to Kageyama's door.

Kageyama.

Throughout it all, Doumeki barely made a sound. He lay at Yashiro's feet and felt blood seep from his nose.

Breathing raggedly, Yashiro found that it disgusted him to look at Doumeki any longer. He stepped over him and headed for the door.

* * *

Doumeki lay there for far too long. He then straightened and sat up against the wall and remained there for even longer. Fighting obvious demons.

If he had been more proactive, he would have saved himself a world of grief. As it turned out, Yashiro had sent him a text from the backseat of the cab not long after he left.

 _Yes, I hate you. I will for a while. No, you're not fired. And you're not quitting. I still want you to kill Nakazawa._

Doumeki read the text a full hour after it had been sent, feeling like he was dreaming. As he dumbly processed it, another text flashed across the screen.

 _If you ever betray me again, I won't fire you, I will kill you._

Relief flooded his entire body right to his fingertips. And then:

 _I can't remember the ending of_ Wild Sheep Chase _. Finish it and remind me._

Then, for the very first time since he was a young boy, Doumeki started crying.

 **The actual sex (overheard by Nanahara):**

First, Yashiro's face was smothered in the quilt and Doumeki, who couldn't recall the precise moment his erection had re-emerged, drove it into him without a word or sound. Every time Yashiro moaned, Doumeki slammed into him harder and pushed his face further into the mattress.

Next, he pulled Yashiro's hair back so hard and fast his neck hurt. He gasped sharply for the first time in open air.

'Fuck, yes. Ugh! Harder!'

Next, Doumeki squeezed the pale white cheeks between which his cock was barrelling in and out and he caved to the urge to mark the skin. His hand came down hard; several belts in quick succession. Angry hand prints emerged after each cry from Yashiro.

Next, he turned him over, pushed in again at the same moment that he covered Yashiro's mouth with his own, this time biting his bottom lip so hard he tasted blood. Yashiro whimpered into his mouth and tried to angle his face away to catch his breath but Doumeki didn't let up. For long minutes as he fucked Boss, the red, metallic taste swirled and danced around both their tongues. When Doumeki finally pulled up and Yashiro got an eyeful of his bloodstained lips, he knew he was a goner.

'My arm. Twist it again!'

He was hoping Doumeki would tear the sling off but Doumeki almost did one better. He traced his way down Yashiro's abdomen, his fingertips carrying all the deceptive gentleness of a sniffer dog. Then he found the place, the scar from the third gunshot wound. Just as Yashiro caught on to what he was about to do, he pressed the scar as far into his flesh as it would go.

Yashiro screamed and came. Doumeki came silently but just as hard.

 **The aftermath:**

'Boss?' he mumbled in a daze.

( _Exit Nanahara_ )

It was a rerun of the last aftermath. First the recon (shivering body, bleeding lip, damningly red bullet wound) then the immediate self-loathing. Only this time the nausea was stronger. Without another word, he left the room. Breathing hard, Yashiro smiled at the ceiling.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Dr Guilt-Ridden-Doting-Bodyguard Jekyll and Mr Reluctant-But-Fantastic-Sadist Hyde. That was probably what the guy originally intended to write, Yashiro decided. Before 19th century English (or whatever) editors censored him.

Doumeki stood in the bathroom for a while. Then he sat on the edge of the bathtub with his head hung for a slightly longer while. He tasted blood.

When he returned, Yashiro was sitting up against the bedhead and smoking, looking entirely at ease. Happy, even. He'd wiped most of the blood off his mouth but the cut was still open and oozing slightly.

'Let me guess. You went and sat on the toilet lid with your head hung?' he said with a smile, propping his face up between his thumb and index finger. 'Can you try not to battle your demons so obviously? It's boring.'

His eyes travelled down the wide expanse of Doumeki's chest, his large arms, balled fists and only half-flaccid cock. Possibly his favourite cock of all time, Yashiro thought. In recent memory, anyway, he amended again.

'I…'

Doumeki stared at a place on the carpet.

'You…?' Yashiro goaded.

'I quit.'

A brief silence.

'Really? Fake resigning so soon after being fake fired?'

'It's… it's not fake.'

Yashiro stretched his legs out and folded them.

'For one thing, I'm sure there's a HR rule somewhere that says you can't be naked when you hand in your official resignation.'

He knew he was dealing with a scared, confused little boy throwing a grown-up tantrum. Swinging Doumeki back around was going to be a no-brainer. But his heart hammered anyway. He had no idea that he was having enough of an effect on the man for him to put his precious job on the line. How wonderful.

'Stop hovering in the doorway. Sit down.'

Doumeki sat on the edge of the bed by his feet. Yashiro swelled his cheeks and blew air out noisily.

'Why do you want to quit?'

Pause.

'I don't want to hurt Boss anymore.'

'I think you do. You should see yourself when you do it. It's like you're inspired.'

No response.

'I like being hurt,' Yashiro said slowly. Masochism 101. He thought about Doumeki's blinding jealousy and rage. 'And I like hurting you.'

He took a drag and blew smoke towards Doumeki but he was too far away for it to reach.

'Don't you want to be hurt by me?'

 _I want you to do whatever you want to me_ , Doumeki thought.

Yashiro waited for a response and then sighed.

'You're not quitting. Frankly, that was a lame attempt at even pretending.'

'But –'

' _But Boss, I'm a huge pussy and I don't want to hurt you anymore even though it feels like heaven when I'm doing it_.' He'd raised the pitch of his voice and nearly stopped to laugh at himself. ' _So I'm putting my foot down. Absolutely not. I absolutely quit._ Well,' he said, switching back to normal. 'I didn't know you were so eloquent, Doumeki. If you're going to play hardball, maybe there's something I can do to sweeten the deal.'

His words brought Doumeki to the prologue of Time Number 5. He'd said the same thing to Ota in almost the same tone. Doumeki tensed.

'You remember Nakazawa, right?'

His jaw clenched on cue. Yashiro licked a fresh drop of blood off his lip.

'Oh, you don't remember? Gorgeous face, amazing hands, merciless in bed. Let's see… oh, yeah really tall. Taller than you, if I recall. Ringing any bells yet?'

'Yes.' All the hatred he could muster in one syllable.

'He organised the shooting.'

Doumeki looked at him for the first time. Yashiro inclined his head in confirmation.

'Matsubara wants me dead too now. Misumi dug around and found out they joined ranks with Hirata in his evil plot for world domination. But Hirata's lying low after his first attempt at killing me. He's letting Nakazawa and the Matsubara group do the dirty work for a while.'

Doumeki processed. Going up against both Hirata and Matsubara Group was going to be tough. Boss was in more danger than ever. And that bastard Nakazawa. If he ever saw him again, he'd do more this time than just punch him in the jaw.

'Have you ever killed anyone, Doumeki?'

Yashiro's voice was suddenly quiet. Silence slithered into the room in its wake.

Doumeki thought about his father. He remembered how his head had flopped back almost sadly each time he pummelled his fist into it. He remembered letting the body fall like a rag doll to the floor. Dead, he thought. I want you to be dead.

He wasn't, as it turned out. Close but no cigar.

'No.'

'It's a feeling like no other.' Yashiro's eyes had taken on the cold glint of steel. 'You channel every part of you that wants to cause hurt and you focus it into one sharp, lethal little point. What happens after that is beautiful.'

Doumeki held his gaze. For once, he understood the rest of the situation before Yashiro explained it.

'So here's the deal sweetener. I'm a little annoyed at Nakazawa. I've decided to send him and Matsubara a message from their friends at Shinseikai. If you're interested in retaining your job…' He watched Doumeki carefully. 'I'll let you kill him.'

There was a note of fatalism in the air. As soon as Yashiro said it, Doumeki saw himself standing over Nakazawa's corpse. It had already been decided. It had already happened.

'Yes, Boss,' he said anyway.

'Great.' The cigarette was stubbed out on the underside of Doumeki's bedside lamp. 'You drive a hard bargain.'

* * *

Less than five minutes later, the unsteady peace they thus reached was completely shattered.

'How are those jam sandwiches coming along?' Yashiro had asked suddenly. It was impossible to tell from his tone that they'd discussed murdering another human being only seconds ago.

So Doumeki had pulled on some underwear and returned to the kitchen like a boomerang. He threw the stale sandwiches into the bin and fished out the last remaining slices from the bread bag. Boss would get the real slices and he would have to make do with the end slices that were really all crust. He didn't mind them.

He was slowly spreading jam into the corners when Yashiro ambled into the kitchen looking for a more convenient ashtray.

'You look good in just underwear,' he said approvingly.

Intuiting what he needed, Doumeki retrieved a shot glass from an overhead cupboard and put it on the countertop. Yashiro tapped some ash into it and kept smoking.

Doumeki caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of his eye and then turned his head fully. He was wearing Doumeki's shirt and nothing else. The shoulders were too wide, sleeves were too long, and the shirt tails only barely covered everything. It was all just very good; somehow even more alluring than when he'd seen him completely naked.

Yashiro basked in his gaze for another moment or two before deciding to destroy the moment. He touched his cheek.

'Oh. Is there come on my face?'

Doumeki turned back to the sandwiches. Yashiro watched his hands.

'Crusts off.'

When Doumeki was done, Yashiro picked up the sandwich from the chopping board and took a large bite.

'Fuck,' he said thickly. 'I don't know if it's because the last time I ate was on a plane or what but this is damn good. Make another one.'

Doumeki felt a disproportionate amount of pride. Yashiro settled on the couch to polish off the sandwich, happily indulging in his sweet tooth.* He glanced again at _Wild Sheep Chase_ on the coffee table.

'I'm staying the night,' he announced over his shoulder.

'Okay.'

'Maybe also start slicing the grapefruit for dessert.'

'Okay.'

The tang of blood suddenly leaked in with the jam. He touched his lip. He remembered how Doumeki had bitten and pulled.

'Where do you keep your Band-Aids?'

'In the drawer in the bathroom. I'll get one for you.'

'I'll get it. Keep those sandwiches coming.'

If Doumeki had insisted on getting him the Band-Aids, it wouldn't have happened.

As Yashiro walked to the bathroom, Doumeki was in a tiny, blissful world that had been created in the aftermath of Yashiro's praise. He remained there for the next thirty seconds as Yashiro glanced at his own reflection in the mirror, enjoying the sight of his swollen lower lip, and then reached for the drawer under the sink.

The moment was simultaneous. In the kitchen, Doumeki's heart leapt to his throat at the same time that Yashiro looked down and saw it.

A contact lens container. Marked with the initials K. K.

Doumeki dropped the knife and ran towards the bathroom. He didn't have to go far. Yashiro stood in front of the bathroom door, fist clenched around the small white case.

His face at that moment scared Doumeki more than anything else he'd ever seen.

Yashiro felt only numb, blinding anger. He took in Doumeki's petrified expression without any satisfaction whatsoever. He wanted him to hurt more.

'Why did you take it?'

The question was simple.

Doumeki didn't answer. He couldn't.

Yashiro tried again, keeping his voice low. Dangerous.

'Why did you take it?'

 _Because you're in love with him and I hate that you are._

'I... I don't know, Boss.'

Yashiro stared at him for a moment longer. The light, carefree happiness he'd felt not long ago was a distant dream. Reality was suddenly the decades of pent-up longing for one man. The silent prayers. The fear of rejection. The loneliness of a schoolboy crying his eyes out in an empty house.

The first blow was the same as the one in the hotel hallway; an exceptionally strong backhand right across Doumeki's scar.

Doumeki staggered. Then he felt Yashiro's knee collide with his stomach and he fell, winded and gasping, in a heap on the floor.

Another kick to his stomach. He curled in.

And then, before Yashiro could control himself, one to his face. White flashed before Doumeki's eyes and his nose made an awful sound.

Yashiro's eyes were livid. Manic. Humiliated. It was with an immense force of will that he managed to stop himself.

He had forgotten Doumeki completely. He had transformed into the person who, without a second thought, had beaten Nanahara senseless and delivered him to Kageyama's door.

Kageyama.

Throughout it all, Doumeki barely made a sound. He lay at Yashiro's feet and felt blood seep from his nose.

Breathing raggedly, Yashiro found that it disgusted him to look at Doumeki any longer. He stepped over him and headed for the door.

* * *

Doumeki lay there for far too long. He then straightened and sat up against the wall and remained there for even longer. Fighting obvious demons.

If he had been more proactive, he would have saved himself a world of grief. As it turned out, Yashiro had sent him a text from the backseat of the cab not long after he left.

 _Yes, I hate you. I will for a while. No, you're not fired. And you're not quitting. I still want you to kill Nakazawa._

Doumeki read the text a full hour after it had been sent, feeling like he was dreaming. As he dumbly processed it, another text flashed across the screen.

 _If you ever betray me again, I won't fire you, I will kill you._

Relief flooded his entire body right to his fingertips. And then:

 _I can't remember the ending of_ Wild Sheep Chase _. Finish it and remind me._

Then, for the very first time since he was a young boy, Doumeki started crying.

* * *

 _ ***Author's note:** Ready for a long boring story where I brag about my small, insignificant moment of Saezuru psychicness?_

 _I always had this sense that Yashiro had a sweet tooth, which is where the jam sandwich idea came from in the first place. Then after I posted this chapter, I read that Yashiro hates sweet things. So I sighed and added this sentence to the above paragraph: "Perhaps he was just that hungry. He'd never before had a sweet tooth."_

 _And just today, six months after I finish the whole story, I read on someone's blog that Yoneda actually meant for Yashiro to have a sweet tooth and this was mistranslated into English!_

 _So the jam sandwich was vindicated and the above sentence taken out again and now it reads like I originally intended._

 _Haha sorry, that's it for my meaningless brag._

 _Btw if you're a new reader: welcome and thanks for reading and I really hope you're enjoying!_


	9. Yoneda Kou Meets Yashiro and Doumeki

Shaking rain from her umbrella, Yoneda Kou stepped through the restaurant entrance. She looked up and recognised him immediately.

He was, after all, the type to draw one's eye even in a crowd. Something in the graceful lines of his figure. The simple elegance of his vest and tie. Not to mention his strikingly beautiful face. And there was even a strange quality to the way the restaurant lights played in his hair. Doumeki's strange fetish suddenly made sense.

She tucked one of her bangs away behind her glasses and approached. He smiled warmly and stood up. He smelled expensive, she thought, suddenly self-conscious of her ponytail. On him, even the sling seemed like something that was about to be showcased on a runway in Prague.

'You must be Kou-sensei,' he said.

After pleasantries were exchanged, they sat down on opposite ends of the booth. The lazy smile never left his lips. She felt herself being benignly assessed.

'So,' he said, leaning forwards. 'What do you think of the draft so far?'

She took her cue and pulled out the manuscript. Placing it between them, she stared at the title page and thought of the first words he'd written. _People are full of contradictions…_

'It's great, Yashiro-san. Really.'

'Why, thank you.'

'I was especially fascinated by how little Doumeki-san seems to speak. If you read just his lines one after the other, he doesn't seem to say more than ten words every chapter!'

'And most of those words are "Yes, Boss,"' Yashiro laughed.

'Is that based on reality?'

'One hundred percent. Terrifying isn't it?'

'Just... intriguing.'

'That he is.'

'Did you write it all yourself? The story, I mean?'

'Sort of. Hard to do one-handed so I mostly made Nanahara scribe as I dictated.'

Yoneda tried to picture that unlikely scene.

'So, is there enough there to turn into a biography?' he asked.

Yoneda blinked in confusion. 'I'm… it's not a biography I'm writing, Yashiro-san. I'm a mangaka.'

'Ah. Even better. Sorry, I didn't really read the memo.'

'That's... that's okay.'

'So you're an artist? How nice.'

She smiled. 'Thank you.'

'I'm sure you'll be able to render us faithfully. My ineffable charms and Doumeki's blundering oafishness. Ah, speak of the devil.'

Yoneda glanced up as if startled. Doumeki walked towards them through the tables. Yashiro had done him justice. Intent, unsmiling eyes, strong jawline, huge frame.

'Does it really take that long to park a car?'

'Sorry, Boss.'

'Doumeki, meet Miss Yoneda Kou.'

Yashiro turned to Yoneda and was quite surprised to see she had turned bright red.

'Nice to finally meet you,' she said in a small voice, bowing awkwardly.

'Hello,' he replied with a bow.

He went to sit beside his boss but Yashiro gave no indication that he was going to move from the edge of the booth so he was forced to take a seat beside Yoneda. His deadpan face beside her scarlet one made Yashiro want to take a photo.

'Kou-sensei is the one writing up our little romantic comedy,' he said.

'Actually,' she stuttered. 'The story's not.. the manga's actually a drama with… with dark sexual overtones…'

She heard the words come out of her mouth and kicked herself. _What the hell are you doing_ _,_ _Kou?_

Yashiro grinned broadly. 'That's what I said. Romantic comedy.'

It was clear that Doumeki, for one, couldn't care less about the genre of his story.

The waiter came to take their order. Yoneda knew she was blushing and that Yashiro had picked up on it almost immediately. He didn't seem to mind her lapse in professionalism in the least, not that this provided her with any sort of relief.

She couldn't explain, even to herself, her strange reaction to Doumeki Chikara. Perhaps it was because she'd pored over the pages so much she felt like she knew him intimately; knew everything he was capable of and hiding behind the calm façade sitting beside her.

She told the waiter in a normal enough voice that she'd like the pumpkin risotto.

Thankfully, she started to relax a bit more when she and Yashiro discussed the story. Doumeki didn't speak or move until the food arrived, at which point he began to eat silently. Yoneda couldn't even be sure he was listening.

At some point, he reached over the table to cut Yashiro's steak into bite-sized pieces. After he was done, Yashiro picked up his fork and ate left-handed. They didn't speak and barely even looked at each other during this exchange. Yoneda watched their wordless harmony with almost guilty fascination.

'Actually, there is a specific reason I wanted to meet with you,' she said at length. 'For most of the story there was a good balance between the…' She was suddenly very aware again of Doumeki at her elbow. 'Between the sex scenes and the mob scenes.'

'Right.'

'But then, after you and Doumeki-san… after you discovered the contact lens case in Doumeki-san's drawer -'

'Oh, yes! You mean right after he made me come by pressing into my bullet wound while he was doing me. Good, isn't he?'

Yoneda blushed again. Doumeki glanced up briefly and even caught Yoneda's eye before returning to his food. Yoneda wondered if she was imagining that there was a faint flush in his cheeks.

'Right. After that scene… I feel like the balance fell away in the rest of the story.'

'How so?'

'Afterwards, you focused more on the sex than anything else. You've given me only bullet points on the mob situation.'

'I bullet-pointed some of the earlier sex scenes too,' Yashiro pointed out. 'Mostly when Nanahara was struggling to scribe.'

'True, but –'

'I get bored of the Yakuza drama,' Yashiro admitted easily. 'I get bored of it in real life sometimes, let alone when I try to write about it.'

'But it's so interesting! I really want to capture that world realistically.'

'Make it up,' Yashiro said with a shrug. 'Like you said, I gave you the dot points. I'm sure you can fill in the blanks. It's the sex that people care about.'

'No, but, it's the…' She glanced around and lowered her voice. 'It's the Yakuza stuff that I actually need your help with. I don't really know anything about it. If anything, it's the sex I can make up by myself.'

He raised an eyebrow. 'Oh?'

Yoneda sensed she'd painted a target on herself.

'And how is it that you're so well versed in the art of gay male S&M? Hands-on research? Or just lots of porn?'

The waiter arrived at that moment with dessert and pretended not to have heard.

'I… it…'

Yashiro happily watched her flail and flush. He wondered idly what she would be like in bed. He always knew it was the straight-laced ones with glasses and a few misbehaving bangs that you need to watch out for. It had been a while since he'd sampled the fairer sex. Doumeki would probably be on board.

'You know as well as I do that the vast majority of readers skim through the politics and focus on the sex,' he said, finally throwing her a lifeline. 'At least the first time round. Then, if they're real fans, they read it through a second time and try to absorb some of the background. Only those who believe in delayed gratification put up with other scenes the first time round. You know, board meetings and phone calls. Phone calls where no one's taken their pants off, anyway.'

Yoneda was reluctantly impressed.

'You seem to know a lot about this particular readership.'

'I just figured it's what I'd do.'

She sighed and touched the manuscript again. 'Alright, I'll fill in the blanks. All that's left is Doumeki-san killing Nakazawa -' (not even a flinch from the steadily chewing Doumeki) '-and then the final showdown with Hirata. I should be able to do that.'

'Wonderful.' The dessert was cleared away and Yashiro signed the cheque left-handed. 'Any other questions?'

'Yes, just one quick one. Do you and Doumeki-san have any preferences regarding names?'

'Whose names?'

'Your names.'

'Our names?'

'Your names in the story.'

'What's wrong with our names now?'

'Well, I… I assumed you wanted your identities protected. You know, given what you do for work.'

'Compared to what I have to deal with at work, I doubt having a fangirl base will pose a much bigger threat to my life.'

'But…'

'Our real names are fine. Doumeki's especially. No one'll believe it's real anyway.'

Yoneda began to realise that where Yashiro was concerned it was easier to give up. She nodded.

Outside, the rain was coming down more insistently.

'Do you need a lift anywhere?'

'No, I'm fine. I live nearby.' _And I know what's happened in the backseat of that car._ 'Thank you though.'

'Pleasure meeting you, Kou-sensei. I look forward to the release date.'

He lit a cigarette and ducked under the umbrella Doumeki had unfurled. Yoneda, feeling guilty both for staring and for succumbing to a terrible end-of-chapter cliché, watched the pair walk away.

It was then she realised that Doumeki had said a total of three words all evening, one of which was 'Boss'.


	10. Compulsory Sex Holiday

**Warning: Somewhat disturbing sex ahead**

* * *

As he closed his front door, Yashiro realised his fingers were still tightly holding the small white case. How the hell had he even paid the cab driver? He tossed it into a corner and fell on the couch.

Doumeki had stared and then staggered and then fallen. He didn't once resist or defend himself. It probably never even occurred to him to do so. Yashiro could, theoretically, for the sake of science, have kept on pummelling him. Kicked and hit him until he was nothing more than bruises. Would he really have taken it? Would he have let Yashiro kill him slowly like that, on the floor of his own apartment, over a twenty-year-old contact lens container?

 _Yes, Boss._ Obviously.

It suddenly occurred to Yashiro how large his apartment was. Why did he ever think he'd need all that space?

He had a few problems to deal with. For one, it was clear that Doumeki knew him and his long-standing demons far too well. Also, Doumeki had stolen something from him. Also, he'd beaten Doumeki up.

But the problem that was causing him most grief at that moment was an unreturned text message. He lay on the couch for over an hour, waiting for the phone to light up.

When it finally rang, he answered without looking at the screen.

'How's your nose?'

'My what?'

It was Kageyama. Yashiro felt hollow disappointment as well as an unfamiliar surge in his gut.

 _Oh, hey. I just beat up my bodyguard because he knows I'm in love with you._

'Nothing. What's up?'

'Have you seen Kuga?'

He chuckled softly. 'Nope. How many times have you lost him now?'

Kageyama grunted. 'Lost count.'

'You should consider getting him microchipped.'

'Think he's causing trouble somewhere?'

'Maybe. When'd you last see him?'

'Yesterday. We… we were having a fight. He blew up at something I said and left.'

'What'd you say?'

'It's not important.'

'Tell me.'

'I… I said he was so self-centred sometimes he reminded me of you.'

'Gee, thanks.'

'He didn't take it too well.'

Yashiro closed his eyes, tired and amused. 'Glad I brought you two together.'

'You'll tell me if you see him?'

'Sure.'

'Thanks.'

Kageyama paused and Yashiro could just picture him scratching the side of his face, brows knit together just slightly.

'You okay, by the way?' he asked. 'You sound off.'

Yashiro opened his eyes a fraction.

'I'm fine.'

'Okay. I'll see you later.' After hesitating: 'If he contacts you, tell him I said I'm sorry.'

He hung up.

Yashiro checked his screen. Still no reply from Doumeki. He sent another text. Something about betrayal and the threat of death. To liven the mood.

Looking back up, his eyes fell on the low bookshelf against the living room wall. It was nearing evening and he hadn't switched on the light so most of the titles were in shadow. The only one he could make out was Steinbeck's _Of Mice and Men._

A delighted laugh escaped his throat. An implausibly huge, bumbling halfwit devoted to his frequently abusive friend. If there was a better modern-day Japanese version of George and Lennie somewhere, he sure hadn't heard of it. He then remembered the ending and his smile faded. His apartment was quiet again.

He sent another text. About the ending of _Wild Sheep Chase_. Surely it had to be better than George and Lennie's fate.

The phone rang almost immediately after that. Yashiro stared at the name on the screen for a long while before answering.

He didn't say anything and, for a few seconds, neither did Doumeki. Until:

'I'm sorry, Boss.'

His voice sounded strange, Yashiro thought. He'd probably kicked his face a little too hard.

'It's fine.'

Loud silence filled the air.

'How's your nose?'

'Bleeding.'

'Not broken?'

'I don't think so.'

'Must be off my game.'

He thought of Lennie and felt an actual prick of guilt, which disturbed him. He tried to switch gears.

'Actually, it's good you called. Do you remember the place where you changed the tire that time? Really depressing, abandoned parking lot, two pathetic little restaurants.' _Unanticipated_ _first kiss._ 'Know where that was?'

'I think so.'

'Find out the name of one of those restaurants. I'm thinking of inviting Nakazawa out to dinner. You're coming too.'

'Yes, Boss.'

Yashiro smiled at the hard edge that had crept into Doumeki's voice.

'Make a reservation for three. Four, actually. He'll probably bring a friend.'

'When should I make it for?'

Yashiro stared out the window. A small bird had perched on the balcony railing and was hopping to and fro uncertainly. Its head was a demure blue leading into an inky black on the wings and tail. Blue rock thrush, Yashiro thought, without the faintest idea how he knew that.

'Not done hating you yet, so in a couple of days.'

Pause.

'Okay.'

He hung up feeling both better and worse. After a few more hours lapsed and he forced himself to get up, change his clothes and crawl into bed, he realised he couldn't remember where he'd thrown the contact lens case.

 **Mob situation in bullet points:**

-Nakazawa doesn't know Yashiro knows anything.

-Nakazawa doesn't really question Yashiro's strange choice of restaurant (maybe the Shinseikai owned a love hotel nearby?) or why Yashiro has both their bodyguards sit with them. Slightly put off by the waves of hatred emanating from guy with scar on cheek. But ignores it, focuses on Yashiro's unfairly enticing half-lidded gaze. Wants to wreck him again.

-He also figures that a restaurant isn't the best place for Take II on Yashiro's life, so the pressure's off all round. He prepares to just shoot the breeze with Yashiro and, most likely, end the night with a nice hard fuck.

-They talk shop. Hirata this and Hirata that. How to stop him. A bit about Misumi's awkward position in the middle of it all. Update on Ryuuzaki's condition.

-Conversation lasts a long time; the waiters politely remind them that they're about to close. Outside, only their two cars are left in the parking lot. Not another soul.

-Yashiro says a few clever things that set Nakazawa's teeth on edge. Suddenly wishing he'd brought more goons.

-Suddenly, Doumeki's elbow is thrown in the other bodyguard's face, who falls. Nakazawa reaches for his gun and whirls around to point it at Yashiro but the one-armed bastard disarms him without breaking a sweat. He aims a punch which is sideswiped and then Doumeki barrels into him from nowhere and he hits the ground.

'To summarise,' said Yashiro, shooting Nakazawa's bodyguard in both legs to put him out of order. 'I know you're working with Hirata and that you tried to kill me. And Doumeki over here hates you for various personal reasons. You're about to die.'

Nakazawa was gorgeous even sprawled on the ground, inches from death, Yashiro thought. Maybe _because_ of that, actually. Long hair and long legs splayed, eyes glinting with fear.

He was so busy ogling he didn't notice that Nakazawa's hand was reaching for the small pistol in his belt. Doumeki did. He aimed and shot Nakazawa's hand without flinching.

Nakazawa and the goon's cries rang loud in the night. Tokyo turned a deaf ear.

Yashiro's eyes darted from Doumeki's sphinx of a face, the hard line of his body as he stood over Nakazawa and the bloody, mangled mess of Nakazawa's left hand. He was hard in seconds.

'Do it,' he told Doumeki, almost breathless.

Nakazawa whimpered, flecks of spit flying. He stared up at Doumeki with an expression that only the certainty of death could inspire in a man who valued pride above all else.

Doumeki returned the gaze impassively and flashed back to one of Yashiro's monologues. How Nakazawa had taken his ass cheeks in his hands and stretched them apart for so long and hard that he thought his hole would tear. He lifted his foot and pressed it down on the front of Nakazawa's pants, grinding hard. Another strangled cry.

 _Jesus Christ, I might come on the spot._

'Enough, Doumeki,' Yashiro said. 'Just do it.'

Doumeki made sure he was looking Nakazawa in the eye. _Channel every part of you that wants to cause hurt._ _Focus it into one sharp, lethal little point_.

He raised the gun.

 _What happens after that is beautiful._

The shot echoed. Nakazawa's final expression remained frozen on his face under the new hole in his forehead.

Yashiro stepped to Doumeki's side and stared down at the body. Doumeki suddenly noticed his boss' uneven breathing and flushed face. Fear seized him. _Did he get hit somehow?_

'Are you okay, Boss?'

Yashiro was hypnotised again. The blood trickling from Nakazawa's head into his hair. The permanent fear in his lovely eyes. He couldn't take it anymore.

He turned, grabbed Doumeki's tie and yanked it towards him.

* * *

Doumeki took a split second to register that Boss' lips were on his own, then he responded with full force. He held Yashiro's face in his hands and his cock sprang to attention. Yashiro's hand pawed at it hungrily. Doumeki pulled him closer, in the process nearly stumbling over the dead man's legs.

Dead man.

Idea.

Yashiro leaned back, pulled the front of Doumeki's shirt and they fell in a heap on top of Nakazawa.

'Boss…'

'Shut up. Don't think, just do it.'

By then, they were both long gone. The need to fuck was like a magnetic force. They only had time to wrench Yashiro's pants free of his hips and pull Doumeki's cock out through his fly. Doumeki spat on his fingers and tried to ease the way as best as he could but Yashiro was insistent. He entered him in one thrust and Yashiro cried into his ear.

Despite the image in Yashiro's head, it was logistically impossible to have sex squarely on top of a lifeless body. He had to settle for lying sideways across Nakazawa, his left arm thrown over his chest and Doumeki pounding into him from above.

Doumeki couldn't explain it. Why he felt none of the disgust and all of the thrill. He was fucking Boss over the top of a man he hated whom he'd killed.

He'd won.

Tears gathered again in the corners of Yashiro's eyes from the pain of being fucked raw. He reached his arm up and grabbed the back of Doumeki's collar as his climax built far too quickly.

'Yes! Ugh! Fuck, I'm so close. Don't stop!'

Doumeki growled. 'Can I come inside you, Boss?'

'Where the fuck else would you come?'

Yashiro replayed the image of the straightness of Doumeki's arm, his finger pulling the trigger, Nakazawa's head whipping back and hitting the pavement.

He came.

Doumeki came.

Nakazawa didn't move.

His bodyguard was lying nearby, still clutching his legs and whimpering.

* * *

'I always knew you were messed up, Yashiro. But this... this is a whole new level.'

Misumi still had a bad taste in his mouth from what he and Amou had witnessed through the car window. He glanced uneasily at Doumeki, whose poker face remained as resolute as ever. _Weren't you supposed to be impotent?_

He and Yashiro stood in the parking lot watching Amou and Doumeki throw the body in the trunk.

'What?'

Yashiro smoked, looking supremely relaxed and satisfied.

'It's not necrophilia if it's _on top_ of the dead body. Unless… is there a radius involved or something? I wouldn't know. I'm not a lawyer.'

Sometime during Nakazawa's last dinner, Yashiro had texted Misumi their location. He needed Amou's know-how to get rid of the body. Plus he felt the need to show Misumi that he was dealing with his problems without needing his Oyaji's help. Except for body removal, of course. Even children who have moved out occasionally come back to have their laundry done.

Misumi was somewhat impressed with Yashiro's efficiency. One dead body, about to be missing forever (acid and a few other tricks), and one injured bodyguard to run home and tell the tale. Hirata would be seething. He might, with any luck, back down. Misumi might have a chance at peace.

He noticed that Yashiro's eyes never once left Doumeki as he worked.

'I'm thinking of calling a holiday tomorrow,' Yashiro said, loud enough for the others to hear as well. 'A compulsory holiday for bodyguards everywhere. To stay at home and have sex with their bosses all day.'

Doumeki looked up briefly but made no response.

'Oh, and the same goes for personal attendants too,' Yashiro added. 'Or assistants or wives or whatever you are, Amou. Wouldn't want you to miss out on sex with your boss.'

Misumi and Amou avoided eye contact. The thought of the two of them together almost made Misumi smile.

'Thanks for your help, Oyaji,' Yashiro called before he and Doumeki got into the Lexus.

'Stay out of trouble.'

'Always.'

* * *

 **Setting:** Hirata's office

 **Cast:** Hirata

 **Train of thought:** Body image issues; Nakazawa's death; hatred of Yashiro; world domination

Hirata sighed as he considered his girth in the dim reflection of his office window. He concealed it well enough behind suits. He looked solid, he decided. Intimidating. Not fat.

The news of Nakazawa's death last night was yet another blow. His hatred of Yashiro was pushed to new limits. That hatred had become a real thing by itself, made of its own colours and feelings. What kind of a world would let a reprehensible pervert like that even survive, let alone thrive? It made him sick. It made him… something.

He picked up the phone when it rang. He knew who it was even though the number was blocked.

'Why is it,' the voice began tersely, 'that we struggle so hard to kill Yashiro and still fail, and yet when Yashiro wants someone dead he just snaps his fingers and it's done?'

'He does things in the open,' Hirata said, who'd been pondering the same question. 'We keep trying to make it look like we had nothing to do with it.'

'That is quite a disadvantage.'

'Besides that, he's as slippery as a fucking eel.'

After a brief pause, the voice said, 'So let's get a bigger target to lure him out somewhere quiet. One that doesn't move as quickly. And is easier to see.'

'Who're you talking about?'

'The bodyguard.'

'The big guy?'

'Yes.'

'Why would Yashiro put himself on the line for a bodyguard?'

'Trust me.'

A reluctant pause.

'Fine.'

'I'll text you the address,' said the voice. 'When can you get it done?'

'Soon. Today.'

'Good.'

Amou lowered the phone to his hip and pressed the hang-up button without looking. Edging around the garage, he headed up the stairs to the back door. He moved through the large house quietly. As he'd done for years.

He had a feeling about it this time. A feeling that had been confirmed after seeing them having sex over Nakazawa's corpse. There was something there. If that mastiff was caught and chained up and kicked around a little, its owner would come running.

Reaching the door to the study, he raised his chin and knocked.

'Ready, sir?'

'Just about.' Misumi's head was down as he scribbled away. 'Tell me again why I have to go to this stupid dinner?'

Though it was probably rhetorical, Amou reminded him patiently of his obligations. Misumi sighed, closed his ledger and stood up.

Amou put away his files, helped him put on his coat and followed him out the door. As he'd done for years.

* * *

Yashiro had been dead serious about the compulsory sex holiday. On the drive home, he'd explained calmly to Doumeki from the backseat that he was to come over at nine am sharp the following morning and they would spend the rest of the work day fucking.

'You have no say in the matter,' he was told.

'Yes, Boss.'

'Everyone deserves a holiday.'

And so the next morning, when the bell rang, Doumeki's head was filled with anxious, arithmetical thoughts of the potential of his inner sadist ( _Boss hated me at sixty percent but liked one hundred percent but I keep feeling sick after one hundred percent but I want boss to feel good what about ninety percent how can I stop after ninety without going to one hundred)._ Thankfully, these complex calculations were also sprinkled throughout with fantastic thoughts about Boss in various contortions.

Meaning he was caught entirely off guard when he opened the door to three guys he'd never seen before.

He still hadn't totally shaken the image of Boss in various contortions even as one of the guys swung something heavy into his face, then again on the back of his head. He passed out.

* * *

Such specific happiness. The thought that one was about to have a huge, beautiful cock all to oneself for hours on end.

When nine am came and went with no Doumeki, Yashiro didn't think much of it. He bathed and dressed. Even made himself coffee.

 _Sorry, Boss. Kuga came by and wouldn't let me leave. He complained about Kageyama for hours._

Or: _Sorry, Boss. My shitty Subaru wouldn't start so I had to run all the way here._

Or: _Sorry, Boss. I was so worked up over the idea of fucking you all day I actually couldn't make it out of bed._

He couldn't wait to hear the excuse.

The grey skies of the past few days had been wiped clean and the world was covered in gratingly cheerful sunshine. Yashiro made a list. Kitchen counter, couch, coffee table, balcony, shower, bed (obviously), ironing table. Where else? Oh, washing machine. Bathtub. They could get creative with dining table chairs. Doumeki sitting there and Yashiro clambering on his lap. Or turned away, lowering his hips like he was about to give him a lap dance but really just cutting to the good stuff. He tingled imagining the way Doumeki would be watching him the whole time.

When Doumeki finally rang him, he was humming and pouring coffee.

'You're late.'

'Yashiro.'

His grin fell away. He recognised the voice but had a hard time placing it.

'Ota?'

'Good memory.'

'Hey, long time no see. How've you been?' His voice remained smooth and calm even as his skin prickled. He slowly set down the coffee pot, mind whirring. 'I'm sure you've heard that I killed your boss last night. Well, I didn't personally. That was Doumeki. We had sex over his dead body though. Almost a threesome. Say, didn't you me and Nakazawa also have a threesome? Funny how things work out sometimes.'

Ota seemed a little thrown by this but he recovered fast enough.

'We have your bodyguard. Took him this morning. He's in bad shape.'

A long, important silence followed.

'For fuck's sake,' Yashiro snapped without warning. He sounded exasperated. Thoroughly annoyed. 'I am so fucking sick of the Yakuza bullshit.'

'What?' It wasn't exactly the reaction Ota had been expecting.

'Just… never mind.'

He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. It eluded him why life couldn't just be about having sex all the time, every day. Why did everyone always insist on making it more complicated than that?

'Where and when?' he said in a dull, robotic tone.

Ota gave him the address of an abandoned warehouse (of course).

'No one else. Just you.'

'Naturally. Wouldn't be because you want to shoot me as soon as I get out of the car, would it?'

'We just want to talk things through. Work out a deal that suits everyone.'

'Whatever you say.'

* * *

At first, Doumeki expected to be killed as soon as they dragged him away.

When that didn't happen, he took the beatings silently, expecting to be grilled for information he most likely didn't have.

When they didn't ask any questions and largely appeared to stand around waiting for something between beatings, it occurred to him that he was being used for leverage, ransom or as bait.

The thought confused him a great deal (though this was also probably due to the multiple head wounds he'd recently suffered). What in the world led them to believe he would make good bait? He was the bodyguard. It didn't make sense.

The toe of a heavy boot smashed into his nose. It reminded him wistfully of how Boss had done that to him a few days ago.

And he found himself daring to wonder if it made some kind of sense. Maybe one kind of sense.

He was hauled upright onto a chair for better access to his face. Blood spurted from his mouth as the fist(s?) pounded and pounded. He tried to sit up but his body sagged heavily against the ropes between each hit. One of his eyes began to swell closed.

The one kind of sense went away almost as soon as it arrived.

Boss was smarter than that.

* * *

I'm a goddamn moron, Yashiro thought just outside the warehouse as he clicked the safety off his gun. I must have caught it from that idiot.

Getting there had been an ordeal. He'd always hated driving even when he had the use of both hands. He got out of the Lexus and bent low to inspect the new scratches on its fender, paying no attention to the multiple guns no doubt trained on his every move. Brand new car, he thought, annoyance steadily increasing.

Annoyance was all he was able to feel. If he let in any more than that, he suspected he wouldn't have been able to function.

He was George and they had Lennie.

'I'm here,' he declared loudly.


	11. How Kageyama Saves Doumeki's Life

**_Author's note:_** _The climax of the story, some pun intended. Few more chapters to go!_

* * *

 **Mob situation in bullet points:**

-Amou working with Hirata all along, reasons unknown.

-Nakazawa dead.

-Doumeki stolen by Ota (second in command to Nakazawa).

-Yashiro, annoyed that his sex holiday was ruined, goes to fetch Doumeki.

-In warehouse, Ota is there with his lean face and swimmer's build and four or five goons. Doumeki is lying on his side on the floor, tied up and beaten pretty badly, one of the goons' guns pointed unmovingly at his head.

-Something white-hot and overwhelming rushes through Yashiro's body like a ripple when he sees the bruises on Doumeki's face, the boot prints on his shirt, the blood smears and spatters, the familiar glint of his eyes through the swollen lids. It's a miracle Yashiro manages not to spring a boner right there. He tries to smother that particular emotion with a different one; indignation and anger that these new, far superior wounds now completely outstripped the few meagre kicks he'd given Doumeki only a few days ago.

-Ota seems a lot more confident now than he was in Nakazawa's shadow. Yashiro almost believes that he was actually brought here to negotiate, rather than be immediately killed.

-Typical hostage-in-warehouse dialogue. Stuff about Yashiro silently handing over the reins to someone else. Anyone else, handpicked by Hirata. Someone who would be better suited to Hirata's evil plot when he branches off with his own group. That way, no one suffers, no one dies, no more random drive-by's. And, best of all, grandpa Misumi won't have to get involved. Yashiro asks why Hirata himself isn't here to read out the terms. A viable excuse is given.

-Yashiro confirms that if he says no, they would kill Doumeki. 'And probably me, too, right?' he adds. Ota confirms.

-Yashiro randomly asks about Ryuuzaki's woman. 'She's been missing for a while. I assume you and Hirata are behind that too?' Ota looks confused. Asks why Yashiro cares about that all of a sudden; isn't Ryuuzaki Yashiro's prisoner? Yashiro says he's just curious. He genuinely sounds like he is.

* * *

 _Boss, what are you doing?_

It was still bright outside and Yashiro stood at the opening to the warehouse, slightly silhouetted in the glare, gun held causally by his side. Doumeki's blood ran cold. There was one of Boss and six of them. And here he was tied up on the floor, more useless than a pile of firewood. If he had to watch Boss get shot again…

'That's a good look on you, Doumeki,' Yashiro suddenly said. He was smiling calmly, chin up, eyes down.

He flicked his eyes back up and stared at Ota. He remembered the kind of face Ota made before he climaxed. A lot of under-bite. Having that intimate knowledge was a kind of power in and of itself, Yashiro mused.

'Fine,' he said. The word hung in the air.

'Fine?'

'I agree. Or whatever. I'll step down. I'll make it sound like I got sick of the Yakuza bullshit. Mostly because I'm really fucking sick of the Yakuza bullshit.'

 _Boss…_

'Just let the big idiot go and we'll all head home.'

Ota was equal parts relieved and suspicious. He stared.

Yashiro shrugged. 'It's just me with one gun. I don't have room for any tricks. Except for the grenades in my sling. I'm kidding!' he added in irritation as one of the goons snapped his head up. 'Whatever happened to all the humour in hostage negotiations?'

'How do I know you'll actually do it? Step down, I mean.'

'You don't. But you've made your point. I don't want to spend more of my future in abandoned warehouses, negotiating. You'll have to take my word for it. Just like I'm taking it at your word that you're not just about to kill us both right now.'

And so on. Eventually, Ota gave a stiff nod to his men.

Doumeki's ropes were undone, though his hands were still bound behind his back, and he was raised to his feet. Yashiro grinned at how it took two men to do the job. Once up, Doumeki swayed but stayed up. He was given a sharp nudge. He walked across the warehouse floor towards Yashiro.

As he approached, Yashiro eyed his wounds again. His face was a real artwork. Soft purples, angry reds. One eye nearly closed.

'Wish I'd seen how they turned you into that.' Yashiro put one hand on his shoulder as he drew up alongside him. He was warm. 'Please tell me you were slightly turned on while they were doing it. Just a little bit?'

Doumeki tried to reply, but a rumbling, constricted sound was all he could manage.

'Good God. You guys've got him saying even less than before. I didn't think that was possible.'

'Enough,' said Ota, a little nervous now without the hostage as leverage.

'I agree,' said Yashiro, voice suddenly cold.

Doumeki only felt his boss' hand on his shoulder and the words 'Get down' being murmured in his ear. He obeyed.

Ota didn't know where the bullets came from. One after the other in quick succession, two of his men fell. In a panic, the others cast their eyes for the source and even got a few shots in before they fell too. Ota was suddenly alone.

Despite seeing that Yashiro, crouched on the ground beside Doumeki, hadn't lifted his gun even once, he was Ota's only conceivable target. He raised his gun but Yashiro was too quick. The bullet missed Ota's left arm by inches but it shocked him enough to drop the gun.

Yashiro sprang to his feet, covered the small distance between them and kicked it out of reach before Ota could even draw breath. He stood near Ota, gun trained steadily at his heart.

'My left-hand aim is still so shit,' he muttered to himself in the sudden silence.

'It really is,' said a voice at the door. Doumeki craned his neck up.

The new silhouette was Ryuuzaki's. He held a rifle in his hand, still tense, but looking largely pleased with himself.

'But at least I did an amazing job. Huh?'

'Yes, yes. Well done. Both your fucking and your marksmanship are top notch.'

Heat rose to Ryuuzaki's face and he scratched the back of his head.

'Sitting in the trunk of that car was what killed me most,' he complained stiffly.

Ota took in gasps of air, trying to piece it together. Yashiro came to his aid.

'Tell Hirata "no deal",' he said. After a pause, he considered his words. 'Actually, figure out a far less movie-cliché way of saying that, then say it. And tell him that Ryuuzaki's woman -'

'She has a name, you know.'

'- had better be alive or things are going to get much worse for him. Even worse than they are now. Do you have all that? I could text it to you if you like.' He turned to Ryuuzaki. 'Speaking of movies, can you help Doumeki into the car?'

'What? Why do I have to?'

'I want to keep an eye on Ota until we're good to go. In the movies, this is around about the time when people stop paying attention to the guy on the ground who's still alive. Then some schmuck gets shot.'

'Whatever.'

Doumeki heard Ryuuzaki draw near. After helping him stand, they headed out of the warehouse slowly. Ryuuzaki was muttering under his breath but Doumeki's eyes never left Boss, who stood near Ota with his gun pointed.

A small movement out of the corner of his eye. That was all it was.

And suddenly he bolted back inside.

' _Boss!_ '

He saw Yashiro turn to him in surprise before he slammed into him.

Two shots echoed.

They landed hard on the floor.

Ryuuzaki, pulse pounding hotly in his ears, tried to focus. He saw one of the goons on the floor, evidently not yet dead, his gun still smoking. He took him out with the rifle then ran to where Doumeki and Yashiro had fallen.

It was hard to even see Yashiro beneath Doumeki's huge form.

On his back, two pools of red were steadily growing. They seeped, rich and wet, over the blood smears that had already dried.

* * *

Yashiro lay crushed beneath the dying Doumeki and almost felt at peace.

He'd heard the shots and didn't feel them. He'd felt Doumeki tense. So it hadn't been hard to figure out.

Doumeki's face was tilted slightly so Yashiro could see his battered face, unfocused eyes. He tried to imagine the pain of it. The bullets in his back. Similar to what he'd experienced. They had that in common now. How sweet.

He was still breathing. Making a few noises. _I want to feel that pain_ , Yashiro realised. _The pain of dying_. He tried to move his arm to touch him but Doumeki was too heavy for him to move a muscle.

'Shit, he's been hit! Yashiro, can you hear me? Doumeki, get the fuck up!'

It took Ryuuzaki's voice for Yashiro to snap out of it.

* * *

Doumeki's eyelids fluttered and closed. Boss was safe. He'd done it right this time.

'Doumeki.'

And there was Boss' voice. Nice that it would be the last thing he heard.

'Doumeki. Get off me, right now. You're crushing me to death.'

Used his last remaining strength. With the help of Ryuuzaki. And Boss too. He heaved himself up and rolled away.

Then everything went black.

* * *

Blood gushed through Yashiro's fingers. He watched it, trying not to get pulled into the trance again. He sat up beside Doumeki and pressed his only good hand on the wounds as hard as he could.

 _Stop bleeding. Now._

'Call an ambulance,' he said. His voice shook.

'What?' Ryuuzaki looked up from where he was busy tying up Ota with Doumeki's old ropes.

'Do it.'

'If we do that, the cops will get involved.'

'I don't care. Just do it, now.'

The blood wasn't coming from near his heart or lungs. It was a lot lower. Kidneys, maybe. Maybe nothing at all. Maybe a flesh wound.

Revealing little, the blood kept pouring.

* * *

Ryuuzaki had to take the initiative. After Doumeki and Yashiro sped away in the wailing ambulance, he finished tying Ota up and threw him in the trunk. He handed him over to Shinseikai with a brief, bullet-pointed outline of what had happened.

Then he raced to the hospital.

There, he joined the cast of characters who, at some point or other in the next two days, were shocked at the change that had taken place in Yashiro.

Misumi, Nanahara, Sugimoto, Kageyama and Kuga (who had returned) all saw it, one by one. It was unnerving. Not a single smile. Not a single joke. He barely spoke.

He sat outside the emergency room at first, hands and clothes covered in Doumeki's blood. He only roused himself to tap cigarette ash into the pot plant beside him. He studiously ignored the nurse who reminded him there was absolutely no smoking in hospitals.

Then, when the surgeon gave him the all-clear, he migrated to the chair beside the bed and barely moved from there for the next day and a half.

One by one, after trying their hand at reviving him, everyone left him alone.

* * *

Before waking up fully, there was one moment when Doumeki rose almost to the surface of consciousness. In that moment, he thought he saw the outline of Boss, the colour of his hair at least, somewhere not far from him. Then he sank back into the comfortable depths.

From the outside, Yashiro observed this small change. Doumeki was lying on his stomach, face turned to him, the wounds on his back heavy and padded with bandages. His breathing was faint but steady.

Yashiro saw the eyelids flicker, perhaps even open for a split second before closing again. After that moment, Doumeki seemed different. Relaxed. Like his body had spent the past day fighting and was now resting. There wasn't anything in particular that had given him away. But Yashiro had noticed. He considered himself an expert in this vein.

As he sat there, Yashiro slowly returned to himself. It was almost a physical sensation. Like blood seeping back into a limb that had been constricted. He smiled, got to his feet and stretched.

Then he went home and took a shower.

* * *

And so Doumeki was the only one who never saw Yashiro the way the others had.

When he finally opened his eyes, it was like no time had passed since Boss was behind him in the backseat, reminding him in that smooth, golden voice about the following day's compulsory sex holiday.

In fact, the very first thing Yashiro said was, 'You're late. Forty-seven hours late, to be precise. I told you to show up at nine for our sex holiday and you never did.'

Yashiro put aside the novel he was reading. He dog-eared a page as a bookmark.

Doumeki tried to lift his head.

'Boss…'

His voice was rough and hoarse. Yashiro felt a sudden, powerful surge of lust and welcomed it. He hadn't felt anything of the kind over the past two days.

Doumeki grunted and felt out the insistent, intrusive pain in his lower back that radiated everywhere. He was in a hospital robe and his whole body was stiff and sore. Amazingly heavy. Reluctant to be conscious.

But Boss was there. Legs hooked casually over the armchair rests, smoke rising from the cigarette in the ashtray, head resting on his hand. Familiar, feline smile.

'What happened?' Doumeki asked thickly.

With a bored sigh, Yashiro gave him the rundown. As he spoke, he stared at the cuts and bruises of Doumeki's face, some healing already, others trying on new colours. He wanted to run his tongue along them.

'…which, most importantly, has left me quite sexually frustrated,' he concluded.

Doumeki processed it all slowly. Outside, the sky was rich with the red of evening. He heard birds first and traffic second. The hospital bed was starchy.

'Sorry, Boss,' he said. 'I shouldn't have let them take me.'

'No, you shouldn't have. But that's okay, you can make it up to me now. I mean, you came close by taking two bullets for me and nearly dying. But there's still more you can do.'

'Yes, Boss.'

For a few moments, they held each other's gaze. Then, taking his time, Yashiro stood up.

'I'm curious. Can you still get hard under all that?'

Doumeki's body, despite everything, felt a surge of something when he saw the look in Boss' eye. The strong, lean frame beneath the suit.

'I'm… not sure,' he answered honestly.

Yashiro came close and crouched by the bed. At first Doumeki thought he was going to kiss him, but he just breathed near his ear and pulled the earlobe gently with his teeth.

Doumeki hung his head and felt his cock stir. The pain everywhere else in his body was still there, just as strong, but something else had taken centre stage.

'I,' said Yashiro slowly, in a voice that washed over Doumeki in slow, cresting waves of lust. 'Need to be fucked. Right now. You have no idea how badly.'

'Yes.'

'What do you mean "yes"?'

'I can still get hard.'

'Oh. Wonderful.'

But Doumeki could barely move. Every shift of his muscles, especially those of his torso, sent red warning flares through his body. He almost certainly couldn't turn onto his back.

Yashiro straightened and assessed.

'Let's figure this out.'

First he went to the door and closed it. Then he turned, unbuckled his belt and stepped out of his pants. He spat on his fingers and reached a hand behind him. Doumeki watched as his lips parted and he let out a small moan. The blood flowed painfully to Doumeki's cock.

'Try to lift up onto your elbows,' his boss ordered.

Doumeki concentrated and lifted at the same moment that Yashiro eased himself gingerly beneath Doumeki's huge body. Doumeki felt his wounds call out in alarm but he could only think of the warmth of the body beneath him and the pressing fact that a half-naked Yashiro was manoeuvring himself so his asshole would line up with Doumeki's rigid cock.

They both breathed heavily as Yashiro tried to navigate and Doumeki tried to stay still. He dropped his head against Yashiro's neck and inhaled deeply.

Yashiro chuckled. 'This is how we were for a while after you got shot.'

Doumeki broke Yashiro's concentration by lifting his head and pulling him into a kiss. At the same moment, his cock found the mark and he instinctively pushed in. Far too hard.

Pain tore through Doumeki's body. His head reared back and he let out a tortured groan. Yashiro had never heard him make such a sound, even when he'd been shot. He craned his neck to see the bandages covering Doumeki's wound. They were suddenly soaked through with blood.

'Shit,' he gasped, feeling Doumeki's cock twitch inside him at the same time. 'That's insanely fucking hot.'

Doumeki groaned through pleasure and pain worse than he'd ever felt in his life. Yashiro's hole clenched and released him in agonising waves while Yashiro himself wore a look that made him want to come immediately. He wanted, more than anything else, to move. To fuck him senseless. But he couldn't. In a word, they were stuck.

'Okay,' Yashiro breathed finally. 'You stay still. I'll fuck myself on your cock. Okay?'

It sounded like an amazing plan.

Yashiro pulled his hips back. It was an awkward, uncomfortable action but he persevered. Then he pushed himself back up slightly faster, feeling Doumeki fill him again. He moaned. Doumeki panted, concentrating on staying still.

He felt his wounds pulsing and pleading for him to stop. He was sure he was losing blood. His head was dangerously light. But if he was going to die like this, he would die the happiest man in the world.

Yashiro heard Doumeki's breaths come out in haggard, unsteady bursts. He couldn't be sure if it was because he was close to dying or close to coming but either way, he didn't stop. He kept pushing up into Doumeki's cock, trying to feel about for his own climax.

It was slow but it did the trick.

At least it would have done if there hadn't been a quick rap on the door followed by someone coming in.

Later, all three had to come to terms with the possibility that, just by interrupting them, Kageyama had saved Doumeki's life.

* * *

Yashiro was back on the armchair, smoking, as Kageyama tried to tend to Doumeki's wounds. Blowing smoke, he grinned at the endless stream of chastising.

'What the hell is wrong with you, Yashiro? Practice restraint for once in your fucking life! He was shot twice!'

'I was shot three times,' Yashiro reminded him.

'But no one was molesting you in bed while you were recovering!'

Yashiro met Doumeki's eye. They flashed to that day on a different hospital bed, Yashiro's grip on Doumeki's shirt and Doumeki bending over to take the boss' cock into his mouth for the first time.

'Right. Good point.'

'You're unbelievable.'

Kageyama peeled back the sodden bandage on Doumeki's back.

'Where the hell is that nurse?'

His face was still bright red from the scene he had witnessed, like he was still seeing it in front of his eyes. He pushed his glasses up his nose and sweated. Yashiro watched him fondly, placing his cigarette between smiling lips. Still a grouchy old man. Just as he'd been at age sixteen.

Doumeki, pushed into the background, tried to hold back a scaly, ugly emotion.

That look on Boss' face. He could barely stand it.

'Jesus, these bandages are soaked through.'

That look spoke of something Doumeki could never reach. A past they shared that he could only see from the other side of a glass wall. A feeling his boss had formed and nursed and held in the solitude of his own world for decades. A feeling he protected by using anyone and anything else around him to fill the void, Doumeki included. He'd known and accepted it for a long time.

But suddenly, the feeling of Kageyama's hands, his nearness, was too much to bear.

'You're still bleeding out.' Kageyama threw the bandages away, rang the buzzer for the nurse again and, with nothing else on hand, tried to soak up the blood with a nearby blanket.

'I'm fine,' Doumeki said suddenly.

'Just hold still.'

'Get off.'

Yashiro heard the tone. He looked up.

'Give me a second, the nurse will be here soon -'

'Get _off!_ '

Doumeki tried to pull away and his back seared with agony. He grunted and clenched his teeth.

Kageyama, thoroughly confused, stepped back and stared.

'What's wrong with you all of a sudden?'

Yashiro was quiet.

He gently turned it over in his mind. All of it. He turned over the decades. And the days. The past few days especially, during which time a lot of things had lined up. Unlikely things like Steinbeck and Murakami. Gherkins.

He smiled, allowing himself just one last private moment with someone he once was, before speaking.

'He's jealous of you.'

In the terrible silence that followed, Doumeki's ears rang.

Kageyama turned to him, nonplussed.

'What?'

Yashiro continued smoothly, 'He's jealous of the fact that I've been in love with you since high school.'

Absolutely nothing changed in Kageyama's expression.

'Very funny.'

'It's not a joke. In fact, it was very painful. You were so oblivious.'

Another silence. Yashiro crossed his legs thoughtfully.

'I've had sex with hundreds of men, literally hundreds, and in that time I've only ever been in love with the one who I could never have. Isn't that such a cliché?'

Kageyama tried in vain to hear the tone in Yashiro's voice that meant he was joking. He couldn't hear it. In fact, he'd never before heard Yashiro put on a voice like this. His heart thudded painfully.

'I even pushed Kuga your way because I knew he would make you happy. That's how much I love you.'

'Jesus, Yashiro.'

His face burned under Yashiro's gaze. It was like he was meeting him for the first time. The weight of years fell squarely on his shoulders. There was nothing he could possibly do or say.

It may have been one of the worst moments of Doumeki's life. If he was able to move, he would have fled the room.

He imagined Kageyama saying something like _You should have told me sooner_. He imagined the look on Yashiro's face as Kageyama moved to him and kissed him, pushed him into the wall, started fucking him. Would they notice Doumeki was still there? Probably. Yashiro would make him watch.

Kageyama of the real world cut into his reverie.

'This isn't funny.'

'I'm not joking,' Yashiro patiently repeated.

'Yes, you are.'

'I'm really not.'

Pause.

'But you -' Kageyama grasped at straws. 'Then why the hell would you be telling me this now?'

Yashiro looked at Doumeki for the first time.

'Because that clumsy oaf is the only one who figured it out. He's not as dumb as he looks. And he's been jealous of you ever since.' A soft, mean chuckle.

Humiliated, Doumeki felt himself flush. He turned away to glare at the starchy sheets of the hospital bed, praying for the ceiling to cave in. His back throbbed angrily. Pathetically.

While Kageyama's brain raced for something to say, Yashiro's eyes traced out the knife scar on Doumeki's face.

 _Careful, now._

'What he doesn't know,' Yashiro said slowly, and both men heard a subtle, important change in the quality of his voice, 'is that I've fallen for him.'

Doumeki's heart stopped. The air in the room froze.

'In fact,' Yashiro continued, eyes lazily focused on the glowing tip of his cigarette. 'I'm more in love with that clumsy oaf than I've ever loved you, Kage. And that's saying something.'

Another truly awful silence followed.

Yashiro waited patiently, like he had all the time in the world, for Doumeki to look up. When their eyes finally met, Yashiro smiled again. Lightly. Ironically. With his eyes half-lidded, of course.

It was a trick. Another of his tricks.

'Boss...'

Yashiro abruptly stood up, slicing through the thick fog of awkwardness he himself had created and seemed impervious to.

'So let Kageyama take care of you already, you idiot. If you die on me, you're fired.' He put out the cigarette and pulled on his suit jacket with a fluid one-armed move. The right sleeve draped becomingly over his sling. 'As entertaining as it is, you can stop being jealous of him. You won.'

He smiled cheerfully at their stunned faces and walked towards the door.

Doumeki, numb with shock, instinctively went to follow. Lifting his abdomen again sent more bolts of pain through his body, filling his head.

Kageyama, meanwhile, still hadn't quite caught up. It would take him several days, weeks, really, to do so. But his instincts as a doctor told him to restrain the bleeding man, which he tried to do.

Doumeki barely even noticed he was there.

'Boss!'

To his surprise, Yashiro stopped in the doorway and looked back with slightly raised eyebrows.

At a loss, Doumeki could only think to ask, 'Where are you going?'

'Little errand to run. I'll be back.' He suddenly seemed to remember something. 'Oh, Kage, you dropped this.'

He fished something out of his jacket pocket (something he'd seen and picked up on a prescient whim before he left his apartment) and tossed it across the room. A dazed and flushed Kageyama reached out and only caught it after bouncing it around a few times. He found himself staring at his old contact lens case and sank further into confusion.

Yashiro was gone, leaving behind yet another terrible silence in his wake.

The only thing in the room that hadn't been at all affected by recent events was Doumeki's wound, which was still gushing. Kageyama shook himself and tried to tend to it again.

For his part, Doumeki tried to settle, mind reeling.

 _I've fallen for him._

 _I've fallen for him._

 _I'm more in love with that clumsy oaf than I've ever loved you._

* * *

The nurse finally arrived and Kageyama gratefully took his leave. He walked out of the hospital feeling like he was about to wake up at any moment. The contact lens case was in his pocket. All he wanted to do was collapse on his couch, tell Kuga what happened, and have him explain it all to him in a way he could understand.


	12. Emergency Stop Button

**Setting:** Doumeki's hospital room

 **Cast:** Doumeki

 **Train of thought:** Boss

He found out that dreams concocted by pain, medication, sexual frustration and emotional shock were bizarre ones indeed.

(Pain from the bullet wounds, medication for the bullet wounds, sexual frustration from having been inside Boss but not having been able to come, and emotional shock from… from something he was still struggling to process.)

Some of these dreams started off fairly self-explanatory. **Dream 1** was about his father raping his sister. But of course, his father was actually him. He waited for his sister to turn into Yashiro beneath him but she didn't. He then looked up to see Yashiro leaning against the doorframe. _Don't mind me,_ he said. _You two finish up first._

He woke from this dream into **Dream 2** where Yashiro was sitting naked on the armchair in the hospital room. He'd thought it was real and even felt the blood rush to his cock. Yashiro was jerking himself off slowly and he said, _Wish I'd seen how they turned you into that._ It seemed realistic enough. And then Doumeki noticed Yashiro was using his right hand.

The following night, **Dream 3** was about birds. Little black sparrows and large owls with baleful eyes. The sparrows were everywhere, on Doumeki's head and arms and legs, one of them pecking insistently at his thigh. Nearby, a gold-feathered owl perched regally on Yashiro's shoulder, not that he seemed to mind. Doumeki wished the little black one would stop pecking him so hard. Why the thigh? He held the lighter flame for Yashiro's cigarette and heard Yashiro's thoughts clearly in his ear. He was mildly pleased to note that he could finally read Boss' mind. He listened for a long time.

* * *

The doctors said he was recovering well. At first, they were worried that the medication was having an unforeseen side-effect on his speech. They eventually understood he was just a man of few words. Almost no words.

It took him a day to be well enough to leave the bed. He felt his way around the room slowly, pain shooting from his wounds with every step.

That was when he saw the book Boss had been reading. _Of Mice and Men._ With nothing better to do, he opened it to the first page and finished it a few hours later.

* * *

The day after he had the bird dream, Doumeki awoke feeling better. Slightly more limber. He was able to make it to the en suite and back without much alarm.

It was one of those days that felt like late evening even though it was only afternoon. Grey skies smothered the city. It had been a beautiful, clear day, Doumeki remembered, the day Boss had come to fetch him from the warehouse. His outline against the open door had been so striking. Like something someone had drawn.

He looked at his phone on the side table. He hadn't heard from him for almost two days. _Little errand to run_ , he'd said. Doumeki of the real world wasn't as proficient at reading Boss' mind as bird-covered dream-Doumeki had been, but something told him that Boss wasn't to be disturbed.

So he waited.

* * *

On the third day, he was coming back from the bathroom when the phone rang. He took few stupid jolting steps, felt an ungodly flare of pain and buckled. His knees hit the ground hard and he let out a groan.

'Just when I thought you couldn't possibly get more uncoordinated.'

Doumeki looked up dizzily, not trusting his perceptions anymore. But it seemed like it was Boss all right. No one else in the world could claim rights to a smile like that. Even his dreams hadn't quite hit the mark.

Yashiro went to Doumeki's phone and checked the screen.

'Nanahara,' he said before sending the call to voicemail. 'He can wait.'

He turned, went to the bed and sat on its edge, observing Doumeki's sprawled form nearby with that Cheshire-cat smile.

'They said you were getting better. Wonder what their idea of getting worse is.'

Doumeki, shivering a little from the effort, pulled himself up to a kneeling position. Yashiro only needed to reach out his arm and he could have helped him to his feet. He just watched.

 _Boss is here,_ was Doumeki's only winged thought.

Out of the corner of his eye, Yashiro noticed that the book he'd left on the side table was now on Doumeki's pillow. He raised his eyebrows.

'Did you read it?'

Doumeki followed his line of vision.

'Yes.'

'The whole thing?'

'Yes.'

For some reason, Yashiro felt self-conscious. As if he'd written the book himself. He watched Doumeki breathe and try to push off the ground.

The skies outside were still troubled and broiling.

Something spoke to Yashiro then. An old, thin, familiar voice. It told Yashiro to lift his foot, place it on Doumeki's shoulder and press down.

Doumeki stopped. He sank back a little. Kept his head down.

Yashiro increased the pressure, eyes emotionless. Doumeki sank back a little more, his lower back protesting. Didn't make a sound. Waited.

Push him to the ground, the voice said.

A few flecks of rain dotted the window.

With a chuckle, Yashiro released his foot. Doumeki glanced at him and waited for a beat or two before slowly standing up.

Fuck he's big, Yashiro thought yet again. He raised the same foot and hooked it around Doumeki's hip. He drew him in slowly.

Doumeki let himself get drawn.

 _What he doesn't know... is that I've fallen for him._

As Yashiro leaned up to kiss him, Doumeki heard it again. Over the past few days, he'd played the lines so many times in his head they had worn thin.

 _I'm more in love with that clumsy oaf than I've ever loved you, Kage._

Yashiro was surprised when Doumeki pulled back. There was a small, eyes-averted pause.

'Boss...'

The conflict was there, written clear as day in his face. Yashiro understood it immediately and couldn't hold back a smile.

'Yes?'

'You…' Doumeki struggled, eyes elsewhere. He tried to condense his emotions. 'Did you mean it?'

Yashiro was on the point of sweetly asking _Mean what?_ He could have dragged it on for as long as he wanted, until Doumeki was a six-foot-three stack of endearing, red-faced confusion.

Instead, he let his smile slowly fade. He remembered the grey world he'd slipped into as he waited in the emergency room to hear from the surgeon, tapping cigarette ash onto some fake soil in a pot.

'Yes,' he said.

Silence.

Like it was suddenly too heavy for him, Doumeki lowered his head and rested it on the nearest thing, which, at the time, was Yashiro.

Embarrassed and taken aback, Yashiro didn't move. Doumeki's cheek was warm against his neck.

 _Good lord, please don't let him be crying._

He wasn't. He was just a little dizzy from a combination of things (as above: the pain, the medication, the sexual frustration, the emotional shock). To add to all that, over the past few seconds he had braced himself by imagining a few different versions of Yashiro's response, the most likely one being: _No, you idiot, I just wanted you to relax so Kageyama could stop you from bleeding to death in front of my eyes. Now hurry up and get your cock out._ And, both crushed and elated, Doumeki would have taken his cock out.

The word _Yes_ on the other hand. It just didn't seem likely. And so he'd needed to rest his head. Just for a moment.

Yashiro heard him take a breath in and let it out slowly. Smiling again, eyes on the far wall, he touched the short, bristly hair just behind Doumeki's ear.

'Idiot.'

* * *

They were kissing. Heavily. Lips and tongues in a hot, urgent mess. Doumeki's hands roamed like they were doing inventory. Face. Hair. Neck. Cock. Hair again. Cock again, for good measure. His touch was possessive, Yashiro realised with a thrill. He was being claimed.

Yashiro's wrapped his legs around Doumeki's hips. He didn't want to admit it, but he made sure his ankles were locked well below the bandages on his lower back. With that precaution out of the way, he didn't hesitate to squeeze him tightly, pushing him in so their chests and cocks were pressed together. No room to breathe.

Outside, there was a flash of lightning which seemed to unzip something in the sky. Torrents of rain lashed at the windows and Tokyo disappeared behind a grey haze. Spring storm, Yashiro thought. Unexpected.

Doumeki tasted like a strange mix of things. Sour and sharp, possibly from medications. With a little tang of blood. Not quite blood, no. More like the taste of a healing wound. Possibly from the cuts and bruises inside his mouth. And Yashiro had disturbed that healing process. Just a little. Just enough to taste it. It drove him wild.

Boss, meanwhile, tasted like Boss. Cigarettes. A hint of scotch. Bliss.

Doumeki's mind accelerated straight to one hundred percent. Clothes torn off, slammed face-first into the window, hair pulled back, cock driven in, a belt in his hand to make huge, red welts on his back and ass, face slammed again and again into the window with his hand to shut him up and to make him cry out louder. The thoughts made a wet circle of precum on the front of his robe.

Yashiro's mind was drifting along the same wavelength.

And so it was jarring for them both when Yashiro pulled away with a ridiculous sound like a plunger. It even made him chuckle.

'No sex,' he said, trying to reclaim his breathing. 'If I rape you again, Kageyama will have my head.'

Doumeki's mind was still on the window-splayed Yashiro. 'But –'

'Nope. I'm going to be that junior high school girlfriend you keep treating me like. No sex. Wait until you're not a cripple anymore. Or until prom night.'

He was still wrapped tightly around Doumeki and even gyrated his hips as he spoke, increasing the friction between their cocks. Doumeki's head swam.

There was a knock on the door. Unlike last time, though, no one came barging in.

'Yes?' Yashiro called.

'It's me,' said Nanahara. 'I figured you'd be here.'

'Come in.'

Doumeki tried to step away but Yashiro kept his legs locked. He leaned back as Nanahara, slightly wet from the rain, entered. He took in the scene and turned scarlet.

'What the…'

'Did you need to see me for something?' said Yashiro with a warm grin.

'I can… come back later.'

'You're here now. Spit it out.'

'Uh…'

Even more than their incriminating position, Nanahara was mostly put off by the blankness in Doumeki's gaze. Nothing ever seemed to faze that guy, he thought. Whether it was slicing off a finger, getting shot in the back or getting caught dry humping the boss. He tried to remember why he was there.

'Is it true, Boss?'

'Is what true?'

'Did you and those two guys really go around messing with Hirata's… Hirata's everything?'

Yashiro glanced at the ceiling as though trying to recall. 'Yes. Yes, I believe we did.'

 **(Mob situation in one bullet point:** The two guys who used to work for Hirata, the ghosts whom Yashiro had 'gently' persuaded to join his side after the car chase scene, had recently helped him dismantle a lot of Hirata's operations; drugs, prostitution, the works. Scores of people had died over the past three days – Yashiro had stopped keeping count. Low-level guys, most of them, but enough to infuriate the big guy on top.)

'Are you crazy? It's all out in the open now! Hirata's going to have to respond.'

'A big final showdown. It'll be nice that way, don't you think? No more back stabbing or shady warehouse deals. Just a good old fashioned shoot-out. Or whatever. It'll be my first big showdown, so I don't really know how it works.'

'Misumi's going to be so pissed –'

'Misumi doesn't have to get involved. It's between me and Hirata.'

Nanahara marvelled over the fact that that the man sitting on a bed with another man between his thighs clearly seemed to hold the upper hand in the conversation.

'Why now, all of a sudden?' he wanted to know. 'Weren't we doing okay with our lay-low plan?'

Yashiro leaned back fully on his elbow.

'He touched something of mine, so I took everything of his,' he said simply.

Trapped between Yashiro's legs, Doumeki felt his ears ring again.

'Well, almost everything. He's not dead yet.' He looked at Doumeki. 'So get better before the big showdown, okay?'

'Yes, Boss.'

'Also get better so I can get fucked already. I feel like my ass is about to close over.'

Nanahara made a face. 'Ugh. I don't want to hear that.'

* * *

Doumeki took the Boss' words to heart. He willed himself to get better. Over the next two weeks as tensions between mobsters grew on the streets outside, strength slowly returned to his body.

Shoes polished and tie straightened, his bandages concealed and his limp gone, Doumeki was walking out of his room and towards the elevator when Yashiro himself strode down the hallway holding flowers. Doumeki blinked.

'For you,' said Yashiro, fighting to keep his face straight. 'A congratulations-on-not-being-a-useless-cripple-anymore bouquet. Hard to find.'

Doumeki took the flowers mutely. Yashiro pursed his lips at the sight and doubled up with laughter.

'Come on,' he said eventually, still sniggering. 'Let's go. Final showdown.'

He didn't take the elevator the first few times, waving apologetically to those inside. Doumeki didn't understand and didn't ask. When Yashiro finally decided to step inside, the elevator was empty. That was when it clicked.

Inside, the flowers landed with an indignant puff on the floor. Their tongues were locked and Yashiro's head was pushed up against the elevator wall so hard he saw stars.

They hadn't even waited long enough. A few nurses and elderly patients watched gaping mouthed as the doors slowly closed on the scene.

About thirty seconds later, the elevator was out of order. Someone inside had pressed the emergency stop button.

* * *

'Why did you do that?' Yashiro said, pulling his mouth off Doumeki's cock. 'The whole point was to get in a quick hard fuck before the doors opened on the ground floor.'

'Oh.'

'Moron.'

'Is everyone okay in there?' called a static-filled voice through the speakers.

Idea.

'The lights went out and the elevator started shaking,' Yashiro said, holding down the button for the speaker. 'So we got worried and pushed the emergency stop.'

'That… sounds unlikely.'

'Well, that's what happened.'

'Okay, well… we'll send someone there to get the doors open and get you folks out.'

Yashiro was back to sucking Doumeki's cock, taking him all the way down his throat and gagging loudly.

'Excuse me, sir? You still there?'

He pulled off.

'Yes, I'm here. How long will that take?'

'About five minutes, give or take.'

'That sounds about perfect, thank you.'

'Uh… okay.'

Yashiro fixed Doumeki with a look as his slender fingers kept stroking his dick. 'You heard the man. Five minutes.'

Doumeki remembered that Boss had once called him inspired. He felt it for the first time then. With the build-up over the past few weeks, the unfulfilled image of window-splayed, belt-whipped Yashiro and the added pressure of five minutes, he had absolutely no time for reins and bits and blinkers. It was one hundred percent the whole way.

He wrenched Yashiro to his feet, spun him around and slammed him face-first into the elevator wall, hand on the back of his head. Yashiro yelled and grunted.

With his other hand, he removed Yashiro's belt entirely and pulled down his pants. He filled his hands with Yashiro's smooth cheeks and shoved both thumbs into his hole. Yashiro inhaled sharply. Hearing it, Doumeki thumped him against the wall again.

'Ah!'

Another thump, his face right up against the smooth metal, smashing his jaw. He hoped it would leave a mark. He finally understood Doumeki wanted him to shut up. He bit his tongue.

Which was a mistake, because that was the moment Doumeki pushed his cock into him.

He bit too hard and tasted blood again. It was fast becoming a theme. Doumeki started pounding.

'Oh, fuck! Fuck, you feel so good.'

For that, he got another face-full of metal wall, plus Doumeki's huge hand covering the side of his face, holding him to the cold steel.

He resorted to whimpering and breathing hard through his nose.

The sound made Doumeki go on overdrive. He fucked fast and deep, feeling Yashiro's insides give way and soften, welcoming him, pulling him in. He suddenly wanted to hear Boss' voice again. He removed his hand and pulled his hair back sharply so his face came away from the wall.

'Ah! Shit, Doumeki. Yes!'

Hearing his name sparked something new. He bent over and picked up Yashiro's belt on the floor. Wrapping one end around his hand, he raised it and whipped, the buckle coming down hard on the pale skin of his ass, leaving an immediate mark.

Yashiro cried out and then actually cried, tears stinging his face. Doumeki was relentless. It was like no force in the world could stop his cock or the hand that delivered blow after blow of welts. He felt himself climbing and climbing and then tip over. He came on the elevator floor.

Feeling Yashiro bucking around his cock made him lose focus. He dropped the belt and grabbed Yashiro's hips.

'Boss, I'm close,' Doumeki warned.

'Don't come inside me,' Yashiro gasped suddenly.

'Why?'

'This is a new suit. You'll ruin it. Just pull out and come on the floor.'

Doumeki didn't know if it was part of the game but it pissed him off regardless. He slammed Yashiro hard into the wall one last time, held him there and came inside him.

He braced himself against the wall, hovering over Yashiro and gasping for breath. Yashiro was panting just as hard. His face was sore and throbbing while the belt marks on his ass stung in the cold air. It almost made up for two weeks of abstinence. Almost.

Then there was the matter of his suit. An expensive Armani. And nothing to wipe or clean up with.

Idea.

'As soon as you pull out,' Yashiro said, his voice breathy. 'Suck it all out of me. All of your come.'

Even though he'd just climaxed, the words sent a tingle through him. He was still somewhere between sadist Doumeki and doormat Doumeki. He obeyed.

'Don't swallow.'

He straightened, mouth full of his own semen, unable to place his emotions exactly. Yashiro turned around, pulled his face close and prised his lips open with his own. The transfer was effortless. Yashiro licked Doumeki's entire mouth clean. Doumeki felt his cock stir again and tried to subdue it.

Yashiro smiled as he pulled away and licked his lips. Hard to believe the word 'impotent' was ever associated with Doumeki Chikara.

That was when there was a sound from above and the elevator doors were wrenched open just a little. They were somewhere between floors.

'You folks okay in there?'

'Fantastic.'

Pleased that he'd kept his suit safe, Yashiro pulled on his pants and motioned for Doumeki to pass him his belt.

Instead, Doumeki picked it up, slid it through his belt loops and fastened it in front. Yashiro watched his big hands work.

Their eyes met.

Yashiro smiled.

Doumeki's heart thumped.

There wasn't a mark on Boss' face from being smashed against the wall, he noted, with equal parts relief and regret.

Perhaps slightly more relief than regret.

* * *

 **Final showdown with Hirata in very thin bullet points (to be filled in at Kou-sensei's discretion; apologies for the brevity, Kou-sensei, it just didn't seem important compared to the elevator sex scene):**

-After build up over weeks, final scene takes place at night near docks, Hirata and co versus Yashiro and co. Everyone on the good side is still alive. Sugimoto injured but not crucially. Ryuuzaki is also there, having just rescued his woman (who definitely has a name).

-Typical showdown dialogue where Hirata reveals just how intensely and personally he hates Yashiro. The slutty granddaughter who gets the inheritance. Yashiro impressed by the analogy.

-Amou revealed as bad guy.

-Things look bad for Yashiro and co, crouched and cornered, running out of ammo and ideas.

-Tense/funny moment where Doumeki and Nanahara have argument to figure out who will rush out there and die for Yashiro. Yashiro listens and laughs, despite being aware that all three are most likely going to die.

-Misumi and his crew burst on the scene, fuelled by confused paternal/non-paternal love for Yashiro and straight-up anger over Amou's betrayal. Saves the day.

-Close call with Hirata who is close to killing Misumi. Doumeki's sheer brawn knocks him to ground, where Yashiro finally kills him.

-Misumi face-offs with a beaten and defeated Amou. Some semblance of Amou's long-suppressed feelings for Misumi revealed. Misumi about to kill him but can't bring himself to. So Yashiro does it for him. Misumi, shocked, stares at lifeless body for a while.

-Everyone goes home.

 **Aftermath of showdown:**

-Yashiro reminds everyone, whenever he gets the chance, that he'd called it first re: Amou being the mastermind.

-Yashiro remembers with pride how wonderfully Doumeki, his heavy tank, had done. He never says so and Doumeki never knows.

-Doumeki keeps the congratulations-on-not-being-a-useless-cripple-anymore flowers in a vase in his kitchen.


	13. Doumeki Throws a Guy Out a Window

**Setting:** Kageyama's clinic, about a week after the final showdown with Hirata

 **Cast:** Yashiro (needing stitches in his face), Doumeki (mostly unharmed) and Kageyama (wishing he was anywhere else)

 **Topic of conversation:** How Doumeki threw a guy out of a twentieth-storey window

The silence in the room was loud and painful. Kageyama and Doumeki had managed to completely avoid looking at one another.

Yashiro sat on the bed, enjoying the tension like it was a warm bath. Kageyama's needle punctured his skin just above his left eyebrow. The thread followed through slowly but firmly, the skin whitening where it pulled taught. Yashiro had refused a topical anaesthetic, of course. He experienced small, effervescent shocks in his dick every time the needle pierced him.

Kageyama felt Yashiro's eyes on him and tried to concentrate on the needle. He was also very aware of Doumeki looming by the doorway, monitoring his every move, knuckles red with some poor fucker's blood.

No one had spoken for a while. Kageyama felt the weight of the silence and knew that Yashiro was dying to break it. He was only dragging it out for effect.

Sure enough:

'Don't you want to know how this happ–?'

'No.'

'Come on, Kage! It's such a good story.'

'Stop talking, I can't do this right if your head's moving!'

'It all started because Doumeki has this small problem with other men fucking me.'

The needle slipped, nearly stabbing Yashiro's temple. 'Yashiro, for God's sake!'

'After everything that happened with Hirata, we had to cover our tracks well enough so the police don't start getting annoying…'

* * *

 **A few days ago:**

'I need a favour,' Yashiro said into the phone. After a pause, he grinned. 'Very clever. But don't feel like you have to make puns on my behalf. Of course I'm offering sex in exchange. How long have you known me?'

Doumeki summoned dead horses, chopping carrots, wild sheep; anything to help him relax. It worked, for the most part. He could see the white knuckles of his fists, but he was fairly sure nothing else had changed.

Nothing else had changed.

Gunshot wounds. Confessions. Cringe-worthy moments of tenderness. Earth-shattering sex.

But nothing else had changed.

 _You're an idiot,_ he told himself firmly in Boss' voice. _After everything you've seen, was there really a part of you that was hoping you'd run off to Bora Bora and Boss would never look at another cock but yours again?_

Yes, Doumeki answered before he could stop himself.

 _Well,_ the Boss-voice replied. _If that's the case, then you're stupid enough to deserve being on the other side of the door. Time Number 6, my friend._

They made their way to the hotel. Yashiro occasionally threw him a glance, unsure what he was expecting. Doumeki's face was like a still life. Even Sugimoto could feel the tension as they drew up to the hotel door. _Deja-vu,_ he thought, hoping he wouldn't have to be left with Doumeki's steaming pile of beaten-up-cop like last time.

'It's happening you know,' Yashiro said, his voice flat.

Doumeki nodded once. Just like he'd practiced.

'We need him if we want the Organised Crime Division to sweep something so massive under the rug. Need someone with a big broom. For all that sweeping.'

Doumeki didn't reply.

'You're okay with that? You won't go blundering in to kill the guy?'

Sugimoto glanced up nervously.

'I will do what Boss wants,' Doumeki said tersely.

Yashiro wasn't sure if he was reassured or disappointed. A huge part of him wanted to spark that destructive jealousy. He had even played with the idea of an angry threesome in his immediate future.

He tried to catch Doumeki's eye before he went inside the room but he never looked up. Yashiro saw with an almost guilty thrill that his knuckles were white.

Afterwards, they couldn't find Doumeki for a while.

When Yashiro re-emerged, an agitated Sugimoto was outside alone, trying to explain that Doumeki had left soon after the sounds started.

* * *

An hour later, when he opened the door to Doumeki's flat, the first thing Yashiro noticed was the vase of wilting flowers in the kitchen. He recognised them and laughed incredulously.

From the couch where he was sitting, elbows on his lap and glaring at the floor, Doumeki didn't even look up. His tie hung almost to his shoes.

'If I made a list of things you've done that would have gotten any other bodyguard fired, I'd... well, it'd be a long list.'

Expecting no response, Yashiro moved to the couch and sat beside him, wincing slightly. It had only been an hour, after all, since he'd helped with all that sweeping.

'How long are you going to sulk?'

The long line of Doumeki's jaw reminded him of something from early childhood. Something good. Something solid. The room smelled like him.

'I'll make it easier for you. You can sulk…' Yashiro moved closer and ran a finger up Doumeki's shoulder. 'Or you can –'

But Doumeki shrugged him off before he could finish. He got off the couch.

Yashiro stared.

'Okay, the tantrum is starting to piss me off.'

His voice came out sounding far more wounded than he would have liked.

'Are you even listening?'

'If I touch you now, I'll hurt you,' Doumeki said softly.

Yashiro's heart thudded.

'I thought we've been through this. Masochism 101.'

But this was different. Doumeki was different. Almost frightening. It wasn't sexual anger or the explosive, sprightly jealousy that triggered his inner sadist; colours and flavours that Yashiro revelled in.

This was emotional. Deep. This reached places of tenderness and longstanding demons. The stuff of souls.

As intimidating as it was, Yashiro also had to bite back a surge of disgust. It was probably best that they didn't touch after all.

He stood up to leave, angriest at his own expanding, irrational feelings of guilt.

'Be at work tomorrow. No excuses.'

* * *

Ota was the first one who caught the brunt of Doumeki's rage.

 **(Mob situation in one bullet point:** Since the Hirata showdown, he was being held by Shinseikai, escaped, tracked down by Yashiro and Doumeki, and beaten by the latter to within an inch of his life.)

'Jesus, Doumeki!'

Ota's face was barely recognisable. Doumeki stepped away, panting like he'd run a marathon. A minute ago, as he was slamming his fist into Ota's nose, Doumeki could only think about Time Number 5 and how much the bastard had sweated as he pushed his cock down his boss' throat.

Doumeki's eyes were terrifying. Yashiro felt it all, the whole delicious scene, in a familiar place and tried hard to control himself.

After that incident, Doumeki ended up trembling, livid, barely in control.

Yashiro ended up having to seriously reconsider this new, somewhat unexpected state of affairs.

Ota ended up in hospital in a coma.

* * *

So it really was just poor timing for Inami, that ugly gorilla of a cop from the Organised Crime Division (Time Number 4), when he decided to make his second ever appearance.

Yashiro's staff at reception had no idea who he was and, having been given a false name, they let him and a few guys into the building.

At the time, Yashiro was on the phone at his desk and Doumeki stood at the table near the door pouring him a scotch, having a strange existential moment where he doubted his own existence. Who was he really? Why was one of his fingers missing?

Then Inami and his thugs burst through his reverie and the door.

They recognised each other immediately. Doumeki reached for his gun but one of Inami's men pulled one on him much quicker and he was forced to freeze. Inami himself threw his knee into Doumeki's stomach. Doumeki doubled up, gasping.

'That's for last time, you asshole.'

He then closed the office door and locked it.

At his desk, Yashiro calmly replaced the phone on the receiver. One gun was pointed at him, three at Doumeki.

'Inami,' he said warmly. 'Nice to see you again. To be honest, though, I thought I had already settled my affairs with the Organised Crime Division.'

'I'm not with the OCD anymore,' Inami said, turning to approach the desk. 'In fact, I'm not a cop at all anymore, thanks to you.'

 **(Mob/cop situation in half a bullet point:** Discovered by the police for being a dirty cop not long after fucking Yashiro, somewhat irrationally blames him for it, plus maybe a few other more viable reasons for his new, powerful hatred and why he now has goons)

'My condolences,' said Yashiro. 'You're a real loss to the force.'

'Shut the fuck up.'

Inami leaned over the desk. Yashiro remembered how he'd pulled that rough-cut face towards him for a kiss. Just to shut him up. So Doumeki wouldn't kill him. By the look on Doumeki's face from the other side of the room, it was clear he also hadn't forgotten that episode in the slightest.

'Bit stupid of you to come in here, of all places, to kill me,' Yashiro chided.

'No one's going to die,' said Inami, who'd never heard of dramatic irony. 'I'm just going to rough you up a bit, maybe shoot your dog in the leg if he pisses me off enough, and then leave the building before anyone else catches on. Quick and easy. I prefer doing things in the open.'

'That's one thing we have in common.'

'Stand up.'

Yashiro flicked his eyes to the guns pointed at Doumeki. He stood.

Inami took a few steps around the desk and lashed Yashiro brutally across the face with the butt of his gun.

' _Boss!_ '

One of the goons had to slam his gun between Doumeki's shoulder blades to bring him back to his knees.

Yashiro saw a blinding light and the left side of his forehead felt like it had split open. Mostly because it had. He fell against the desk.

Inami held him down, hatred and lust hardening his features. He didn't at all expect the solid kick to his groin. Yashiro then threw another well-aimed kick at Inami's head which sent him staggering backwards, gun clattering away. Feeling blood trickle down his face, Yashiro tried to reach for the gun in his drawer but Inami was up again and slammed Yashiro's head against the desk.

Guns or no guns, Doumeki had to be physically held back by all three goons. There was only one brief moment when he stopped struggling and that was when he heard Yashiro cry out.

The cry wasn't from anger or desperation but from having been very powerfully and immediately turned on.

Doumeki knew this because he recognised it. Inami discovered this when he pulled Yashiro's pants down.

'What the –?'

Yashiro took advantage of his surprise to sock him in the mouth but Inami recovered fast. He punched Yashiro in the same place where his gun had made contact. Yashiro fell limply back on the desk. He didn't move.

That was when Doumeki heard a leathery snap.

A gun was wrenched out of one of the goons' hands at the same time that Doumeki's elbow crunched the nose of another one directly behind him. He shot at chests, legs, whatever was in his way.

Inami had only just unzipped his fly when the implausibly large man with the scar on his face bore down on him like a storm.

Yashiro, briefly dazed and unconscious, came round to the sight (and unmistakable sound) of Doumeki making a mash out of Inami's face on the office floor. He also noticed his pants had been yanked to just below his hips and that he was still hard.

'Ugh,' he grunted feeling his head. His fingers came away bloody. A light trickle dripped over his eye.

Doumeki, possessed, pounded away.

Yashiro turned to him and watched. His cock twitched.

'Doumeki.'

Whenever he had the opportunity to do so, Inami whimpered weakly.

'Stop.' Yashiro tried to sit up. 'Think of the carpet, for God's sake.'

He was hoping to jolt Doumeki back to reality with something stupid and mundane. It didn't entirely work. Even after Doumeki stopped, the possessed glint remained in his eyes. He reviewed the mess of Inami's face.

Without giving any indication that he'd made a decision, he took Inami by the scruff of the neck and hauled him to the large window overlooking the Tokyo skyline. Yashiro's heart leapt to his throat.

'Doumeki…'

Throwing the window open, he yanked the blubbering, terrified man to his feet.

His expression was an artwork of single-minded hate. Yashiro had seen that look twice before; when he beat Ota nearly to death, and, weeks ago, right before he put a bullet between Nakazawa's eyes.

He barely made a sound as he hurled the fully grown man out of the building.

Inami, ex-cop, met hard concrete twenty storeys later.

Doumeki stayed by the window for a few beats, chest heaving. As if twenty storeys may not have done the trick. When he turned, he was greeted by the sight of Yashiro bleeding heavily from the gash on his forehead, lying back on his desk and jerking himself off furiously. His eyes were on Doumeki like he was the only thing that ever existed.

He barely noticed the other guys lying around dead or groaning.

He crossed the space to Yashiro, pulled him forward and flipped him over. Then he flattened Yashiro's good hand on the surface of the desk and crushed his sling beneath the weight of both their bodies, pushing a plaintive moan out of him. Finally, he freed his cock and lined it up.

Through the new fireworks of pain, Yashiro suddenly realised something and started laughing.

'You know,' he gasped between laughs. 'This is how we first met.'

Doumeki paused. Office desk, face-down, ass bare. There had even been a cop involved.

He pushed his palm and fingers through Yashiro's hair for a long moment that hung in the air. Then he clenched that hand, slammed Yashiro's face down and drove his cock in to the hilt.

By then people had been banging on the door for a while. Someone was sent to fetch the spare key. There were thoughts about knocking the door down. Yashiro and Doumeki didn't have a great deal of time.

Luckily, they didn't need it.

* * *

The details of that day echoed in Yashiro's mind for days. Weeks. He couldn't shake them. He was worried that nothing else in his life would ever compare to those few minutes.

He was still thinking about it when he sat across from a new face. Someone whose freshness reminded him of Ota (before Ota went bad). Someone whose eyes travelled from his face to his cock to his legs every few seconds and was waiting for Yashiro to say, _Perhaps we can sweeten the deal._ In fact, to Yashiro's delight, the guy eventually worked up the nerve to say almost those exact words.

It was a scene that took him back. He was on the couch opposite new-Ota, Doumeki not far behind him. A large, firm outline in the corner of his eye.

Yashiro took a few moments, his arm flung along the back of the couch, to consider his next words. New-Ota and new-Ota's men and Doumeki and Nanahara all awaited his response. Doumeki thought about dead horses, chopped carrots and wild sheep.

'Before I answer,' Yashiro eventually said, loud enough for new-Ota to jump slightly. 'I think I should consult my bodyguard.'

He turned right around to Doumeki.

'What do you think? Should I sleep with this guy for the sake of making a deal?'

Doumeki, hands behind his back, glanced over at his boss in confusion. New-Ota and Nanahara seemed just as lost.

'Well, Doumeki?' Yashiro said, leaning his cheek against his hand. 'Everyone's waiting for your answer. Should I let this guy do me? He doesn't look like he'd be that rough, does he?'

New-Ota blushed deeply.

Doumeki tried to find the words. He didn't understand the game.

'Boss… Boss should do what he wants.'

'And I want for you to tell this fine gentleman whether you're okay with my getting fucked by him. Doumeki?'

There was a tense silence. Nanahara heard his pulse in his ears.

'No,' Doumeki said, finally.

Yashiro turned back and gave new-Ota a cheerful one-shoulder shrug.

'You heard him.'

New-Ota turned a different shade. 'What the hell kind of game is this?'

'The kind of game that Nakazawa, Ota and Inami all played,' said Yashiro in the same laidback tone, putting a cigarette to his lips. 'And lost,' he added unnecessarily. By then, everyone had heard about Inami at least.

Everyone in the room stared uneasily at Doumeki. Yashiro alone focused on his lighter. After he took his first drag, he smiled evenly at new-Ota.

'You know, I consider myself an open-minded guy. I'm willing to try working out a deal that doesn't involve fucking. I'm actually excited to try it. What do you say?'

If not for the absence of birds, Doumeki would have been convinced he was dreaming.

* * *

 **A few weeks later:**

'Do you know what they're calling me now?' Yashiro asked, caught somewhere between annoyed and pleased.

'What, Boss?'

'Untouchable. Bet you're pretty proud of yourself.'

Doumeki remained impassive. He was busy trying to remember how to arrange teapots and cups on the tray in preparation for Misumi's visit.

'I miss multiple cocks.' Yashiro sighed tragically and hung his head off the couch, legs draped over the armrest and couch back. 'What if we occasionally threw someone a bone? Like got Ryuuzaki to join in? Or Nanahara, I know he's being dying to have me give him a blowjob.'

Doumeki took a moment.

'Whatever Boss wan–'

'Yeah, yeah, whatever Boss wants.'

Yashiro closed his eyes. He'd seen what that meant. Trembling, homicidal rage and cold distance for days. No thanks.

There was a knock on the door and Misumi came in. It was still strange, Yashiro thought, to see him without Amou at his elbow. It was like he was off-balance.

'Hey, Oyaji.'

Misumi sat on the couch and immediately fished for his cigarettes. He seemed drawn.

'How's the search for a new wife coming?' Yashiro asked, still mostly upside down.

'It's not,' Misumi answered.

'I'm sure you'll find someone.'

'Don't know if I want to.'

Doumeki glanced at him as he placed the tray on the table. For a brief moment, he felt for the old man.

'So what can I do for you?' Yashiro asked, righting himself.

Misumi puffed and took a moment to consider Yashiro. His eyes travelled along the scar that cut across Yashiro's left eyebrow. He then experienced something that was almost entirely paternal. He realised Yashiro had grown up somewhere in the past decade without his having noticed.

He thought about a kid he'd once seen, smiling and whistling while lying naked in the snow.

'There's something I've been meaning to ask you. It's been a long time coming, really.'

Yashiro sat back with a grin. 'If you're about to propose, I'm flattered and everything but Doumeki might actually kill you.'

Misumi rubbed his forehead tiredly. 'I'm making you second in command.'

Yashiro's face froze in place for a moment. Doumeki turned in time to see his false grin fade, to be replaced by the real one. He liked to think he was the only one who knew the difference.

* * *

 **Back to a few weeks ago, when Kageyama was stitching up Yashiro's face:**

He paused with the needle in mid-air, the string attached obscenely to Yashiro's eyebrow.

'He threw a man out of a twentieth-storey window?'

'Yep,' said Yashiro.

'Today?'

'Yep.'

Dumbfounded, Kageyama looked at Doumeki for the first time, whose blood-smeared fists said a great deal more than his expression.

'What'll the police say?'

'They're not huge fans of this guy anyway. We're making it look like a suicide. They'll turn the other way with a little incentive.'

Still mildly shocked, Kageyama turned back to Yashiro.

'You're nervous about touching my face now, right? You should be.'

Kageyama set his jaw and went back to stitching. 'You sound like a guy who's proud of his new rottweiler.'

'That's exactly what I am.' His eyes fell lazily on Doumeki. 'And by God, can my rottweiler fuck.'

A hint of red touched Doumeki's cheeks. Kageyama focused on the needle.

After he was done, Yashiro lightly got to his feet.

'Thanks Kage. I owe you one. Well, another one at least.'

'Actually,' said Kageyama, arms folded, suddenly awkward. 'I was hoping to talk to you alone for a minute.'

'Oh.' Yashiro raised his eyebrows. 'Sounds serious.'

He cast a quick glance at Doumeki, who hesitated for a fraction of a second before leaving.

When the door closed, Kageyama seemed even more flustered. Yashiro was annoyed to discover he wasn't particularly comfortable either.

'I…' Kageyama tried again. 'So everything you said... that day... was true?'

Yashiro's pulse quickened just a tad.

'What, from weeks ago? Takes things a while to catch up to you, doesn't it?'

 _Kuga helped_ , Kageyama thought. _But I'm still struggling._

'Yeah,' said Yashiro, trying to keep his voice light. 'All true.'

Kageyama looked at him. The classrooms and hallways. The nurse's office. The rooftop fence. Years and years.

'But you never…'

'Said anything?' A slow smile that concealed many things. 'Would it have made a difference?'

Outside, beside the door he hadn't fully closed, Doumeki's heart raced. It felt like his head was filled with glue. He suddenly longed for Inami.

'That's not what… I mean, I don't...'

His discomfort made Yashiro feel a bit more at ease. He leaned against the wall, hand in his pocket.

'You know, I had a feeling it was possible to seduce you if I put my mind to it. Granted, it would have taken a little more than dropping to my knees and blowing you, even though that's all most people need.'

Doumeki clenched his jaw. That was all it took for him. In fact he didn't even need that; just laying eyes on Boss had been enough.

Kageyama looked like he was gravely regretting his decision. Yashiro was once again able to enjoy the deeply uncomfortable silence.

'But, in hindsight, it's for the best that I didn't. Don't you think?'

An impossible question to answer.

 _There's something in me, Kage. Something twisted and dark and earnest. You couldn't have handled it. I couldn't have you without your knowing it, so I couldn't have you._

Yashiro glanced at the door. _Him on the other hand…_

'It's because of the rottweiler outside that I even said anything at all,' Yashiro said at length. 'You can thank him for all this unnecessary awkwardness.'

Kageyama opened his mouth and hesitated. It took a few tries, but he finally voiced something that had been pestering him for a while in various forms.

'Why… why him?'

Yashiro was surprised.

'Aren't you just full of questions today?'

When Kageyama made no response, he leaned his head back against the wall and scratched his neck, putting on a thoughtful air.

'I think it's because of his smile.'

Kageyama blinked. 'Are you serious?'

'Christ, Kage. No, I'm not _serious_. Have you ever seen the guy smile once? I don't think he knows how. Not unlike someone else in this room.'

The doctor frowned as though to reinforce the point. Kuga had made similar remarks that grated on him.

'In reality, though,' Yashiro continued, with a perceptible change in tone. It sounded like he wanted to test something in the air. See how it sounded.

Picking up on it, Doumeki willed his pulse to soften so he could hear.

'At first I thought it was because of how he saw me,' he said. His gaze was fixed on the far corner, half-lidded and serene. 'But I think it's because of who he is. He's stronger than anyone else I've known. Strange, isn't it?'

Doumeki stared at the floor.

Kageyama then underwent a strange, specific shift in emotions. He'd felt a diffused version of it over the past few weeks as he tried to process everything, but hearing Yashiro's response brought it back in a pure, concentrated burst. Not jealousy, exactly. Possessiveness. The feeling that he'd been there first.

It wasn't a particularly powerful emotion but it made him uncomfortable enough to say, entirely without provocation, 'I love Kuga.'

A wide, easy smile.

'I know. I knew you would. Not to flatter myself, but he's just me without the tragic past. Anyone can see that.'

Kageyama decided to let that one pass by him for now. He had enough to think about as it was.

'About everything else, I… I just needed to know, that's all.'

'I get it.'

They looked at one another for just long enough. Then Yashiro took a noisy inhale and pushed off the wall.

'Any other questions, doc?'

'No. Just try to keep that guy from throwing people out of buildings.'

'Can't promise anything.'

Hearing his footsteps, Doumeki stepped away from the door. In the hallway, Yashiro glanced at him once, eyes giving nothing away.

'Let's go.'

Doumeki caught Kageyama's eye as he passed the office. For some reason, it was in that brief moment that Kageyama thought he finally saw some kind of likeness between them.

* * *

After they left Kageyama's, Doumeki drove Yashiro home and drew him a bath. Meanwhile, Yashiro peered into the foggy mirror above the sink and felt the nine stitches along his browline with admiration.

'Do you think it'll leave a scar?'

'Maybe,' Doumeki answered, hand in the water.

'It'll be nice to have that in common too, don't you think? A facial scar as well as bullet wounds.'

Doumeki didn't answer, but the thought was most definitely nice.

When he was in the bath, Yashiro did a quick count.

'So of all the guys you've seen fucking me,' he said. 'I think you've killed or maimed them all. Except that random first detective, but I can't even remember his name. Maybe we'll run into him one day. And Ryuuzaki of course. Maybe leave that guy alone, though. I've always liked him.'

Sitting on the tub's rim with his legs in the water, Doumeki squeezed out the sponge. He mentally ran through Times 1-5. Boss was right.

Boss was humming again. He barely noticed he was doing it, or that he was doing it quite soulfully with effortless changes in pitch. Smooth, purring vibratos. It was the same dry, sad tune he'd hummed that day in the kitchen. Doumeki still couldn't remember the name of the song but he listened. He felt something new.

'That book you read in the hospital,' Yashiro said suddenly as Doumeki began massaging his neck and shoulders with the sponge. 'Did you say you finished it?'

'Yes.'

'What did you think of the ending? Sad shit, huh?'

Doumeki was confused. 'Sad?'

Yashiro raised his head.

'What else would you call it when you're forced to shoot your own huge dimwit of a friend in the back of the head just to save him from the world?'

Water ran in beautiful, braid-like rivulets down Yashiro's back. Doumeki watched them and wondered if there was a way he could get Yashiro to start humming again. He tried to switch his focus to _Of Mice and Men_.

'He would've been happy,' he said, thinking about Lennie. 'If he knew.'

'Knew what?'

'That George was the one who killed him.'

Water dripped in the silence.

His tone was flat, Yashiro thought. Entirely unselfconscious. He ran the tips of his fingers along Doumeki's huge foot on the bottom of the tub.

'A little lower,' he said.

Doumeki felt the fingertips brushing his ankle. He wondered if he'd earned the right to let go of the sponge. Press his lips to the back of Boss' neck, move his hands over the muscles of Boss' back, loop one around, slowly grip Boss' cock like it was his own. He would slide into the tub behind him, drenching his clothes, water splashing noisily on the floor and Boss might rest his head back against his shoulder. Eyes open or closed?

Instead, he gently moved the sponge down Boss' back.

He thought about what he'd overheard that day at Kageyama's.

 _It's because of who he is. He's stronger than anyone else I've known. Strange, isn't it?_

The sponge paused.

He had never felt strong. Not once. Least of all around Boss. He felt like he was always on the point of breaking. Out of anxiety, out of insecurity, out of inadequacy.

In front of him, Yashiro's hair was dark and slicked back from the water. He turned his head slightly, wondering why Doumeki had stopped.

But if strong was what Boss saw in him – if strong was what Boss needed him to be – then that's what he would be.


	14. Yoneda Discusses the Ending with Yashiro

_**Author's note:** Epilogue dedicated to KatBlack, whose telepathic messages inspired me to finish the last few chapters in record time :)_

* * *

Yashiro checked the caller name and smiled broadly.

'Kou-sensei! Good to hear from you again.'

'How are you, Yashiro-san?'

'Fine, just fine. How's the manga coming?'

'Really good, actually. I'm almost done storyboarding the final chapter.'

'Did you make do with just the bullet points on the mob situation?'

'I… managed.'

 _Did all the research myself and lost a lot of sleep_ , she added silently.

'That's great to hear.'

'I heard about your new position at headquarters, Yashiro-san. Congratulations.'

'Thank you very much. I plan to be a benevolent king when my time comes.'

'You're probably hard at work, so I'll keep this brief.'

'Oh, no, take as long as you like. I'm actually lying completely naked on a beach.'

'You - really?'

'Yep. Picture the nicest postcard you can. I'm there. Sans clothes.'

'Why?'

'I have an amazing body and the world should see it.'

'No, why are you there? On a beach?'

'Oh. I finally got around to making Doumeki take a compulsory sex holiday. In Bora Bora.'

'Bora Bora?'

'I asked him if he wanted to go anywhere in particular and that's the first thing he said for some reason. He's sitting here in beach trunks. Can you picture that?'

The silence implied that she definitely could.

'One little girl here has fallen madly in love with him. She keeps giving him little presents. Must think he's some kind of silent giant.'

As he spoke, Doumeki idly dug up some sand with a little pink plastic spade.

'That sounds very sweet.'

 _Too sweet_ , Yoneda thought.

'If you have a moment, I was hoping to talk to you about the ending.'

'Fire away.'

She tried to broach the subject delicately.

'Not that I'm not happy for you, Yashiro-san, it all sounds lovely, but I worry that your ending in manga form won't come across… realistically enough.'

'Realistically?'

'After everything you've been through,' Yoneda said. 'For you to have settled into, you know... happiness… seems like a stretch.' She cringed at how it sounded.

Yashiro smiled.

'There's all the mob stuff we're going home to in a few days,' he assured her. 'We're not about to drop all that and open a bed and breakfast. In fact, Ryuuzaki and I still have a bet going about which of us will die first. No such thing as a Yakuza happy ending.'

'I suppose.' She steeled herself. 'And are you and Doumeki-san still…?'

'Fucking pretty much whenever we're not doing something else? You bet.'

Yashiro could hear her blush.

'That's… nice.'

He laughed.

'Well, sorry to have bothered you on your vacation. If you're sure, I'll leave the ending as it is.'

'Sounds fine to me.'

'Enjoy Bora Bora.'

'Take care, Kou-sensei.'

Yashiro hung up, handed the phone to Doumeki and settled his head back against his hand.

'Kou-sensei doesn't think my newfound happiness is realistic. Or my newfound monogamy, I'm guessing.'

'Oh.'

Silence.

'Should I have told her about the threeway with Ryuuzaki?'

(In the office not long ago, through various tricks and manoeuvres, Yashiro had managed to channel Doumeki's jealousy into something else for the course of an amazing, intense few hours.)

'And the few times Misumi sort of… didn't leave the room?'

(Misumi watched, smoking, face unreadable, as Yashiro told Doumeki to show him the new trick they'd learned.)

The sun played on the water as Yashiro considered far away questions.

'Nah,' he decided. 'She'd probably edit it out anyway. Romantic comedies end happy, right?'

'Drama with dark sexual overtones,' Doumeki reminded him.

Startled, Yashiro looked up at him. 'You were actually paying attention that night?'

No response.

'You wouldn't happen to be carrying a flame for our mangaka, would you?'

'No.'

Yashiro chuckled. He closed his eyes.

'I'm taking a nap.'

Doumeki stared at his boss' newly bronzed body shimmering in the sunlight, to the booming applause of the ocean.

'Find me something to eat while I'm sleeping. I have a feeling I'll wake up hungry.'

'Any requests?'

He thought about it. 'Maybe you can wrangle up a jam sandwich somehow. No idea why but I'm really craving one. Don't think I've had one since I was a kid.'

There was a small pause. A wave rolled against the surf beyond their feet.

Then, Doumeki Chikara's face lifted into a smile. The faintest one imaginable. No one on the beach witnessed this small miracle.

'Crusts off,' added Yashiro, his eyes still closed.

It didn't even matter that Boss didn't remember.

'Oh!' Yashiro opened his eyes, as though he just remembered something. Doumeki's smile vanished just in time and he held his breath. Yashiro glanced sidelong at him and fixed him with his most lascivious of looks. 'When we go back to the room, bring the little spade with you.'

And with that, he closed his eyes again. Silence fell on their little stretch of beach.

Boss hadn't remembered. Doumeki's heart sank just slightly.

And then, when his eyes fell on the little pink spade in his hand, it soared again.

Crushed and elated. A feeling Doumeki still wasn't quite used to.

'Yes, Boss.'

 _Fin_


End file.
